THE US CONSTITUTION

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted. "The government was set to protect man from criminals and the Constitution was written to protect man from government.
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals - that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government - that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government." Our Founding Fathers lacked the special literary skills with which modern writers on the subject of government are so richly endowed. When they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, they found themselves more or less forced to come to the point. So clumsy of thought and pen were the Founders that even today, seven generations later, we can tell what they were talking about. "No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." "The powers of Congress to require military service for the common defense are broad and far-reaching, for while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact."

        - Justice Arthur Goldberg

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or change its republican form, let them stand as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity - unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity." "Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere." "Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary judicial power, instead of a limitation on all government power."

        - Thomas Sowell

The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents.

        - Kurt Vonnegut

"Gentlemen, I feel a great difficulty in how to act. I am Vice President. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything."

        - John Adams, first US Vice President

THE LAW

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision."

"The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the facts in controversy."
        - John Jay, 1st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

If you are to respect the rule of law, you must have law that can be respected.
        - Charles Moore, in Britain's "Daily Telegraph"

What is termed "disrespect for law" in fact may only be the manifestation of a burning desire for justice. Order, like law, to be respected, must deserve respect. Disrespect for an order that does not deserve respect ought not to be condemned as degeneration, but commended as a healthy regeneration. What I am concerned about is that lawyers and judges too often regard "order" as a shield for the protection of privilege.
        - JC McRuer

"If I were innocent, I would want to be tried in a military court. If I were guilty, I would want to be tried in a civilian court."
        - Robert Bork

"All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is only one example of many in recent history."

A person is negligent if the probable injury to the victim exceeds the cost of avoiding the accident. "If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of the charge or of the defense, he assumes that character of the judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and in proportion to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of perhaps a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favor the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel."
        - Thomas Erskine, in defending his client Thomas Paine against seditious libel (1792)

"I have a great horror of lawlessness, and it does not improve my repugnance to it that it is practiced upon the lawless."
        - Montgomery Blair, during the American Civil War

~

"Much has been said of the sanctity of human life, and the absurdity of supposing that we can teach respect for life by ourselves destroying it. But I am surprised at the employment of this argument, for it is one which might be brought against any punishment whatever... Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property, or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that of another is to show want of regard for human life. We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself, and that while no other crime that he can commit deprives him of his right to live, this shall.
...
When there has been brought home to any one, by conclusive evidence, the greatest crime known to the law; and when the attendant circumstances suggest no palliation of the guilt, no hope that the culprit may even yet not be unworthy to live among mankind, nothing to make it probable that the crime was an exception to his general character rather than a consequence of it, then I confess it appears to me that to deprive the criminal of the life of which he has proved himself to be unworthy--solemnly to blot him out from the fellowship of mankind and from the catalogue of the living--is the most appropriate as it is certainly the most impressive, mode in which society can attach to so great a crime the penal consequences which for the security of life it is indispensable to annex to it. I defend this penalty, when confined to atrocious cases, on the very ground on which it is commonly attacked--on that of humanity to the criminal; as beyond comparison the least cruel mode in which it is possible adequately to deter from the crime... one of the strongest recommendations a punishment can have, that it should seem more rigorous than it is; for its practical power depends far less on what it is than on what it seems."
        - John Stuart Mill, speech in Parliament defending capital punishment, 1868

~

The British Empire is no more, but in a curious way, English Common Law and the structure of our institutions and those of the United States and the Western World maintain and expand many of its philosophies.
        - Tony O'Reilly

The British constitution is the result of the thoughts of many minds, in many ages. It is not simple, no superficial thing, nor to be estimated by superficial understandings. An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with a clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces and put together at his pleasure a moral machine of another guise, importance, and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances and counteracting and cooperating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand.
        - Edmund Burke

I think the monarchy is an essential part of a balanced constitution in much the same way that the king is an essential part of the game of chess. He doesn't actually do very much, but by occupying his square, he prevents others from occupying it.
I think the history of most countries, not all but most countries which haven't had monarchies or which have gotten rid of monarchies, suggest that once they've gone and politicians start seeking the kind of loyalty and love which monarchs enjoy, you get very serious political problems, and often you get an end to democracy. And I think it would be extremely dangerous to get rid of it.
I think there are many criticisms that you can make of the people who've occupied the throne. They're not perfect. They're not supposed to be. That's not the point. The whole point about them it doesn't really matter who they are, provided they behave themselves within the constitution.
        - Peter Hitchens, on the British monarchy

"Hereditary monarchs play an important part in canalising and neutralising emotions which would otherwise attach themselves to real rulers with genuine powers for evil."
        - George Orwell

When we see what happens in countries which had overthrown their aristocratic systems of government and their royal figurehead, it might be possible to find some virtue in constitutional monarchies.
        - AN Wilson, commenting on Germany and Russia in "After the Victorians"

Politicians spend their lives attempting to make a mark upon history. Kings and Queens embody history. Ironically, it has become the function of unelected monarchy to dignify democracy.
        - Jeremy Paxman, "On Royalty"

Eamon de Valera, future President of Ireland, once denounced the monarchy as 'a Medieval institution' and promptly went off and prostrated himself before an Archbishop, his lordship being dolled up in the full regalia of Lorenzo de Medici... But Dev had got along well with George VI... In his ambivalence towards the monarchy — he hated the symbol of the Crown, but liked the monarch — he was rather an accurate representative of the ambivalence of the Irish people.
        - Mary Kenny, "The Irish Independent"

Divorced-beheaded-died, divorced-beheaded-survived." That was how we were taught to memorize the fates of Henry VIII's six wives back in school. Say what you like about the monarchical principle, but it makes school history lessons interesting. Even back in the innocent 1950s, we all knew who the gay kings were. They were the ones our textbook described as having "favorites." Lots of sniggering in the back row when that came up. With all respect to Republicanism and my adopted country, the Presidency has been a dull show by comparison.
        - Brit John Derbyshire, in America's "National Review"

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

"So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
"Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"
"Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"
"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"
        - William Roper and Sir Thomas More, "A Man for all Seasons"

"Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat. It is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the king's command make it round. And if it is round, will the king's command flatten it? No, I will not sign."
        - Sir Thomas More, "A Man for all Seasons"

"You threaten like a dockside bully."
"Then how should I threaten?"
"Like a minister of state — with justice."
"Oh, justice is what you're threatened with."
"Then I am not threatened."
        - Sir Thomas More and Cromwell, "A Man for all Seasons"

"The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law."
        - Sir Thomas More, "A Man for all Seasons"

"Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"
        - Sir Thomas More to Sir Richard Rich (Welsh Attorney General), "A Man for all Seasons"

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