Home / Topics / Law Quotes

Law Quotes

Browse 12730 quotes about Law.

Law Quotes

“In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.”

Law Political Views Speech Point Of View Jail Prisoner Vietnam Arrested Individual Rights Political Prisoners

Author:Nong ?uc Manh

“Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.”

World Years Has Beens Stills Enough Law Land Speech Innovation Slogans Free Society Malls

Author:Thomas Frank

“Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions; . . . that laws were like cobwebs, - for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.”

Ifs Action Law Used Speech Broke Powerless Trifling Cobwebs

Author:Diogenes

“During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power.”

“The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.”

Firsts Mean Made Law Language Simple Rooms Speech Presses Congress Amendments Freedom Of Speech First Amendment Inference Simple Words

Author:Hugo Black

“A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.”

Law Black Justice Break Rights Theory Speech Abuse Free Speech Free Society Throttle

Author:Clarence Thomas

“Active liberty is particularly at risk when law restricts speech directly related to the shaping of public opinion, for example, speech that takes place in areas related to politics and policy-making by elected officials. That special risk justifies especially strong pro-speech judicial presumptions. It also justifies careful review whenever the speech in question seeks to shape public opinion, particularly if that opinion in turn will affect the political process and the kind of society in which we live.”

“Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.”

Law Natural Speech Excitement Vehicle Impressive Utterance

Book:Philosophy of Style: An Essay

Source: Philosophy of Style: An Essay

“The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws - I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen.”

“In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.”

“Despite the apparent absoluteness of the First Amendment, there are any number of ways of getting around it, ways that are known to any student of law. In general, the strategy is to manipulate the distinction between speech and action which is at bottom a distinction between inconsequential and consequential behavior.”

Way Firsts Action Law Numbers Known Students Speech Behavior Constitution Strategy Bottom Despite Distinction Amendments Manipulate First Amendment Inconsequential

Author:Stanley Fish

“A law imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression.”

Law Example Speech Criminals Protected Freedom Of Speech Penalties Starks Imposing Suppression

Author:Anthony Kennedy

“I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.”

“The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason.”