Pragmatic Sanction

“ Does the political sanction exert an influence over the conduct of mankind? The moral, the religious sanctions do so too. In every inch of his career are the operations of the political magistrate liable to be aided or impeded by these two foreign powers: who, one or other of them, or both, are sure to be either his rivals or his allies. ”

“ It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation. This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the Courts and Ministers of Justice, or by military force; by the coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion of arms. The first kind can evidently apply only to men: ”

“ I shall, therefore, allow, that what justice requires from a private man, becomes, in parallel circumstances, the duty of a nation; and shall, therefore, never advise the violation of a solemn treaty. The stipulations in which we engaged, when we became guarantees of the Pragmatick sanction, are, doubtless, to be observed; and it is, therefore, one of the strongest objections against the measures which we are now pursuing, that we shall be perfidious at a greater expense than fidelity would have required, and shall exhaust the treasure of the nation without assisting the queen of Hungary. ”

“ Government is erected for the purpose of carrying this maxim into execution, by passing laws for the benefit of a nation; and shall a violation of the purpose of its institution, by passing laws injurious to a nation, in creating or fostering the aristocracy of paper and patronage, be cleansed of its guiltiness, because individuals have become the accomplices of the government?
A law or a contract, prescribing an immoral action, is void. No sanction can justify murder, perjury or theft. ”

“ The considerations that international law is without a court for its enforcement, and that obedience to its commands practically depends upon good faith, instead of upon the mandate of a superior tribunal, only give additional sanction to the law itself and brand any deliberate infraction of it not merely as a wrong but as a disgrace. ”

“ These notions of right and obligation are derived from nothing but the advantage we reap from government, which gives us a repugnance to practise resistance ourselves, and makes us displeased with any instance of it in others. But here it is remarkable, that in this new state of affairs, the original sanction of government, which is interest, is not admitted to determine the persons, whom we are to obey, as the original sanction did at first, when affairs were on the footing of a promise. ”

“ We now come to another important word—namely, does the Bible sanction? Sanction! By the term sanction we mean command, consequently the authority of positive, written, divine law, or whatever may be reasonably held as equivalent to such law. It follows, therefore, that toleration is not sanction. Sufferance is not sanction. Municipal legislation is not sanction. An historical statement of prevailing customs is not sanction. A faithful narrative of the life and example of eminent men is not sanction. The remission of penalty is not sanction. ”

“ But the mere fact that force is their sanction does not ipso facto dispose of diplomatic and arbitrational methods. We all know that the force at the disposal of the Sovereign is the ultimate sanction of Law. ”

“ We clothe a public officer with power, we arm him with influential authority over public opinion; not that he may apply these authentic sanctions to the backing of his own malice, and giving weight to his private caprices: and, wherever such abuse takes place, then it should be so contrived that some reaction in behalf of the injured person might receive a sanction equally public. ”

“ According to my old-fashioned notions of morals and of law, there is no human obligation without a sanction, whether such obligations attach to individuals or to States: nor does the existence of the sanction, depend upon the existence of any common superior to enforce it. To me it seems a solecism, to speak of obligations that do not oblige; and that which obliges the observance of an obligation, is its sanction, be that what it may. ”

“ Will any one presume to suggest that it was a deliberate fraud upon the other Government? calculated to leave our Courts at liberty, on some subsequent day, to declare the 17th and 18th articles in effect void? Did we hold out to them the idea of having adopted the provisions of those articles into our national code, when we were conscious that they contained an innate vice, calculated to defeat every beneficial effect? If the argument on this point could meet the sanction of our Government, I would blush for it. ”

“ The only support for the Court's position is to be found in a handful of errant federal cases, bunched within a few years of one other, which invented the notion that an unfairly severe civil sanction amounts to a violation of constitutional liberties. ”

“ We start with a statutory provision that contains only one express sanction, viz., prosecution for making a false statement. No other sections of the Act expressly supplement that one sanction.
The aim of § 9 (h) is clear. ”

“ What we announce now is a rule for the rare case, the case such as the one before us, where a fixed-penalty provision subjects a prolific but small-gauge offender to a sanction overwhelmingly disproportionate to the damages he has caused. ”

“ Intent, of course, often makes the difference in the law. An act otherwise excusable or carrying minor penalties may grow to an abhorrent thing if the evil intent is present. We deal here, however, not with ordinary acts, but with speech, to which the Constitution has given a special sanction. ”

“ In such a case, it might probably puzzle the acumen even of those who can comprehend the theory of moral guilt, to decide which was the obligation and which the sanction. And if the existence of some common superior, was necessary to give validity to sanctions, the obligations contracted by States, could never be rightfully enforced by other States, so long as the equality of States is conceded. Yet no man before this author, has ever doubted the existence of such a right. ”

“ If the criterion of sanction or coercion is insufficient to draw a distinction between individual and social laws, we can still less use it to divide the social laws into customs or unwritten laws, and political and juridical laws. Both customs and laws carry with them sanctions, though of a different order, or, to put it in more precise terms, both offer a choice between probable consequences to the free individual will. ”

“ The true sanction of political laws is to be found in penal legislation, and if that sanction be wanting, the law will sooner or later lose its cogency. He who punishes infractions of the law is therefore the real master of society. ”

“ That we are to leave nothing unattempted for the security of our own religion and liberty, will easily be granted, and, therefore, unless it can be proved that we may be equally secure, though the house of Austria be ruined, it will necessarily follow that we are, with all our power, to enforce the observation of the Pragmatick sanction. ”

“ Therefore the drift of this Essay, is to give a Sanction to one Place above all the rest, by annexing a Priviledge to it, and leaving it to every Man's pleasure whether he will purchase that Priviledge or not. ”

“ And how will it be possible for 'em to conceive, either that our Laws give a Sanction to an Art which is declar'd infamous, or that some Persons dare to stamp with Infamy an Art which receives a Sanction from the Laws, is rewarded by Kings, cultivated and encourag'd by the greatest Men, and admir'd by whole Nations? ”

“ This law is administered by States alone; and the sanctions declared by it, must be applied and enforced, when necessary, by the physical power of their subjects, who, as in the former case, are mere men. Thus it occurs, that in all cases, the preservation of human Rights, must be entrusted to the hands of human power. But until this guardian becomes his own ward, power and right will not be confounded, any more than the obligation with its sanction, or either with the physical force, that may possibly become necessary to apply the one or to enforce the other. ”

“ The fact that any rule has already the sanction of custom raises a presumption that it deserves to obtain the sanction of law also. Via trita via tuta. Speaking generally, it is well that the courts of justice, in seeking for those principles of right which it is their duty to administer, should be content to accept those which have already in their favour the prestige and authority of long acceptance, rather than attempt the more dangerous task of fashioning a set of principles for themselves by the light of nature. ”

“ Whether persons or groups should engage in nonviolent disobedience to laws with which they disagree perhaps defies any categorial answer for the guidance of every individual in every circumstance. But whether a court should give it wholesale sanction is a wholly different question which calls for only one answer. ”

“ An interpretation that can only have the unfortunate consequences of encouraging the filing of sanction motions and discouraging voluntary dismissals cannot be a sensible interpretation of Rules that are designed "to secure the just, speedy, andin expensive determination of every action." ”

“ If they are not frequently administered, not only will their sanction be more regarded and in this way their breach be less proportionately frequent, but of necessity much more absolutely uncommon and consequently much more certainly visited with due punishment in all cases of evidence given before a Court of Justice. ”

“ The sanction of a legal enactment is the penalty which is incurred when the law is broken. A man is "bound over" to keep the peace, and it is stipulated that unless he keeps the peace, he will have to pay the penalty. The fear of punishment is thus, from the legal standpoint, the sanction of his good conduct. Various sanctions may be appealed to as reasons why right actions should be done, and wrong ones avoided, but perhaps the most common is the sanction of punishment. If you do this wrong action, it is said, you will be punished; and if you don't do that right action, you will be punished. ”

“ Legal sanction is above all a penal sanction. It is composed of the chastisements which the law has established for the guilty. There are, in general, few rewards established by the law, and they may be classed among what is called the esteem of men. ”

“ The right of action that the majority sanctions here, on the other hands, is a creature of state law and may be expected to vary in content and effect according to the locality in which it is asserted. ”

“ But as the legislature is composed of fallible men, their sanction does not prove the truth and validity of Jesus's pretensions; and as the conduct of the legislature in sanctioning this revelation might be directed and influenced by political motives, their sanction is an argument rather against than in favour of its truth. ”

“ Except with the previous sanction of the Raj Pramukh, no proceedings, civil or criminal, shall be instituted against any person in respect of any act done or purporting to be done in the execution of his duty as a servant of either Covenanting State before the appointed day. ”

“ In every instance in which a commandment of God is transgressed, under the cover and plea of a human law, purporting to permit what that commandment forbids, there is, in proportion to the authority and influence of the transgressor, a fresh sanction imparted to that law; and consequently, in the same proportion the public habit of setting up a false standard of right and wrong is promoted. ”

“ We discern no basis for holding that the sanctioning scheme of the statute and the rules displaces the inherent power to impose sanctions for the bad-faith conduct described above. These other mechanisms, taken alone or together, are not substitutes for the inherent power, for that power is both broader and narrower than other means of imposing sanctions. First, whereas each of the other mechanisms reaches only certain individuals or conduct, the inherent power extends to a full range of litigation abuses. At the very least, the inherent power must continue to exist to fill in the interstices. ”

“ For under 'society' what is not included! Sanction society, and you sanction, or at least you admit the possibility of a sanction for every kind of common activity and end; and the motives of men in undertaking these common activities become a matter of comparative indifference. ”

“ Mitchell at most is of tangential significance for our current inquiry. While the opinion makes clear that the Government may impose both a criminal and a civil sanction with respect to the same act or omission, and that whether a given sanction is criminal is a matter of statutory construction, it simply does not address the question we face today: whether a civil sanction, in application, may be so divorced from any remedial goal that it constitutes "punishment" for the purpose of double jeopardy analysis. ”

“ Justice Bradley contrasted those provisions with § 2 of the Act of 1866: 'This (latter) law is clearly corrective in its character, intended to counteract and furnish redress against state laws and proceedings, and customs having the force of law, which sanction the wrongful acts specified.' Id., 109 U.S. at page 16, 3 S.Ct. ”