Quotes of the Morning: I Fought the Law

“Attorneys for the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another's arguments.”
-Washington Post, February 21, 2005

“Whoa.. Secret legal arguments? They have an interpretation of law that they feel needs to be kept from the public? Does anyone else feel a cold shiver run down their spine when they read that? Secret evidence I could almost understand. I can see that there might be facts that might need to be kept from the general public, but when an interpretation of public law is considered too controversial for the public to hear about I get nervous.”
-Skippy

“A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey.”
-Chaim Weizmann (1874 - 1952)

“The people's good is the highest law.”
-Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), De Legibus

“Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.”
-Felix Frankfurter (1882 - 1965)

“Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.”
-Sir John Powell

“Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.”
-William Blackstone (1723 - 1780)

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
-H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

“The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.”
-Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)