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Common Law Quotes

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Common Law Quotes

“If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons, to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians; and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption; we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. ['Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law?', letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, from Monticello, February 10, 1814]”

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Book:Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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“The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer.”

LawFreedomHistorySecurityHuman RightsCreditDebtSouth AfricaImprisonmentCommon LawConstitutional LawSouth African LawAlbie SachsConstitution Of South Africa
Author:Pius Langa
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“It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord.”

MenWomenMarriageHistoryFeminismEmpowermentIndependencePropertyGenderInequalitySelf DeterminationMisogynyWomen S RightsMatrimonyMarried LifeFathersSocial NormsBondsSubjugationWedlockHusbandsFeudalismCommon LawGuardianship
Book:The Weaker Vessel
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“But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions.”

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Author:Charles Evans Hughes
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“Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found "against the evidence," ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law.”

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Author:E. P. Thompson
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“The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law; and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took place chiefly between 1150 and 1250, must be shared between the officials of the royal Chancery, who framed new forms, and the royal judges, who either allowed them or quashed them.”

FormLawCommonJudgingAchievementCreditInventionOfficialsRoyalFramedCommon Law
Book:A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919
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“The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King's courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law.”

LawPerfectCommonLandProductsKingsCourtPossessionGoodsRegulationOwnershipSchemesAdoptedDisputesProceduresCommon Law
Book:A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919
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“It was natural that the direct wielders of the royal prerogative, men who sat in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, who knew the secrets of the State and the necessity for prompt action, should despise the merely declaratory character of a good deal of Common Law process. To them we doubtless owe those four great pillars of Chancery jurisdiction, the injunction, the decree, the sequestration, and the commission of rebellion.”

MenShouldStatesCharacterActionLawStarsProcessNaturalDealsCommonSecretFourDirectSatRebellionDespiseRoyalCouncilChamberPillarsDecreePromptsPrerogativeJurisdictionCommon Law
Book:A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919
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“... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.”

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Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state
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“In walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make. He can choose the fair and open path, the path which sound ethics, sound democracy, and the common law prescribe, or choose the secret way by which he can get the better of his fellow man.”

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Book:All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography
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“I'm a common law judge. I believe in deciding every case on its facts, not on a legal philosophy. And I believe in deciding each case in the most limited way possible, because common law judges have a firm belief that the best development of the law is the one that lets society show you the next step, and that next step is in the new facts that each case presents.”

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Author:Sonia Sotomayor
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“[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“Dubai was brilliant, they looked around the world. They saw Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in [the] world in eight years.”

WorldYearsLawPowerfulCommonSawsPiecesNew YorkJudgingEmptyFinancialEightBritishLondonBrilliantAround The WorldRanSoilMost PowerfulChicagoCommerceSingaporeSydneyAcresHong KongShariaCommon LawDubaiSharia Law
Author:Michael Strong
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“Not only the financial power, but also the legal power, has remained seated in Britain. The Washington Post commented on June 18, 1983 that after the American Revolution, all the old laws remained in effect in the new United States: Some of these laws of "English common law" dated back to 1278, long before America was discovered.”

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Author:Eustace Mullins
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“If any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny or rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there should be no commanders or officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no master or officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments - I say I never denied that in such cases, the commander may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits.”

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Author:Roger Williams
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“Consider: what could be more American than the principle that every person is to be held accountable for his or her crimes only? Could anything be more un-American than the Second Commandment's warning that "I Yahweh, thy God, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."? Not even the Common Law would have hung a man because his grandfather had stolen a horse!”

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Author:Frank Zindler
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“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”

LawReligionReligiousCommonChristianityAtheismSeparationPresidentialFoundersSecularUnited States Of AmericaChurch And StateSeparation Of Church And StateOur Founding FathersFounding Fathers ChristianOrganized ReligionUs Founding FathersSeparation Between Church And StateFounding Fathers ReligiousFounding Fathers Anti ReligionFounding Fathers Of AmericaFounding AmericaAmerican Founding FathersFounding Fathers AtheistChristianity From Founding FathersChristian AtheistReligion ChristianChristian FatherReligion And GovernmentChristian RightCommon LawHate ReligionChristianity And Government
Book:Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia: From 1730, to 1740; and from 1768, to 1772
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“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

IfsWellsLittlesSometimesDoneEnoughMotivationalRunningLawLosesDealsCommonBusinessPayToo MuchRiskBalanceEconomicsAddIncapableLowestSomething BetterMotivational BusinessUnwiseLittle MoneyCommon Law
Author:John Ruskin
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“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back...”

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Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another, by force of fraud. Nor is this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books, recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of practice.”

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Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Published by Order of Congress from the Original Manuscripts Deposited in the Department of State
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“Every British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great- Britain.”

AmericaLawBornNaturalCommonRightsSubjectsEssentialsFellowsBritishBritainContinentsCrownsInherentEntitledParliamentExclusiveDominionInseparableGreat BritainCharterGod And NatureCommon Law
Author:James Otis
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“I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law... There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.”

BelieveHas BeensBeautifulLawLyingCommonChristianitySupportPeriodsFoundationBoastOur Founding FathersUs HistoryCivil SocietyFounding Fathers ChristianUs Founding FathersFounding Fathers ReligionFounding Fathers Of AmericaChristianity From Founding FathersCommon LawJurisprudence
Author:Joseph Story
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