William Law

“ A smaller man would either have failed to carry out his purposes at all, or he could have carried them out only by reckless violence. When we examine the administration of William more in detail, we shall see that its effects in the long run were rather to preserve than to destroy our ancient institutions. He knew the strength of legal fictions; by legal fictions he conquered and he ruled. But every legal fiction is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward protest against unlawful violence. That England underwent a Norman Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly England. ”

“ William Law was contemporary with Lindsay. He was born in 1686, at Kingscliffe, in Northamptonshire. So that when the schism originated, he was only an infant. His father was a grocer in that village: but whether he had adopted the principles of the Nonjurors, I am unable to determine. William was sent to Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A.in 1708, and that of M.A. in 1712. At this time, therefore, he could not have been a Nonjuror: but after the accession of George I. when the Abjuration Oath was rigorously enforced, he refused to submit, and consequently lost his fellowship. ”

“ The framers had grasped the great truth that jurisprudence is a science, that the law must be administered by men learned in that science and bound to obey its rules and follow its precedents, that uniformity and certainty are essential to the administration of justice, and that the highest political liberty is the right to justice according to law and not according to the will of the judge or the judge's master, or according to the judge's individual discretion, or his notions of right and wrong. ”

“ To leave such rules nominally intact, and at the same time to indefinitely curtail or enlarge their operation by the withdrawal or addition of particular classes of cases through judicial construction, was a mode of legal amendment eminently adapted to the genius of such communities, and fruitful of many beneficent modifications of the law. It was a matter of minor consequence whether such modifications were effected by sound arguments or quibbles. In an age habituated to the amendment of law by legislation, nothing can be said in defense of the vicious practice of judicial quibbling. ”

“ And these words describe, not only William’s actual legislation, but the widest general effect of his coming. The Norman Conquest did little towards any direct abolition of the older English laws or institutions. But it set up some new institutions alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a few names, habits, and ways of looking at things, which gradually did their work. In England no man has pulled down; many have added and modified. Our law is still the law of King Edward with the additions of King William. ”

“ That amendment declares that no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. ”

“ And to make that ancient, sound and honest principle really an effective protection to the individual and to minorities, the courts of justice of England may at last be empowered, as they are with us, to refuse to give force and effect and to hold for none any statute in conflict with the fundamental law of the land. ”

“ Law was parted from his friends, and in 1740 retired to King’s Cliffe, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was presently joined by two ladies: Mrs Hutcheson, the rich widow of his old friend, who recommended her on his death-bed to place herself under Law’s spiritual guidance, and Miss Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. This curious trio lived for twenty-one years a life wholly given to devotion, study and charity, until the death of Law on the 9th of April 1761. ”

“ It is equally true that it is the business of courts to decide what the law is, and not, by consideration or surmises as to the policy of the government, have the effect to adjudge that to be law which has not been so enacted by the legislature. ”

“ Since in these cases the rights involved are rights of property, not of personal liberty or life as in criminal proceedings, the consequences, though serious, are not of the same moment under our system, as appears from the fact they are not secured by the same procedural protections in trial. It is in this respect perhaps that our basic law, following the common law, most clearly places the rights to life and to liberty above those of property. ”

“ The safeguards of 'due process of law' and 'the equal protection of the laws' summarize the history of freedom of English-speaking peoples running back to Magna Carta and reflected in the constitutional development of our people. The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure.
Here we are concerned with the requirement of 'due process of law' in the enforcement of a state's criminal law. Experience has confirmed the wisdom of our predecessors in refusing to give a rigid scope to this phrase. It expresses a demand for civilized standards of law. ”

“ Of all the parts of a law the most effectual is the vindicatory. For it is but lost labour to say, “do this, or avoid that,” unless we also declare, “this shall be the consequence of your non-compliance.” We must therefore observe, that the main strength and force of a law consists in the penalty annexed to it. Herein is to be found the principal obligation of human laws.
Legislators and their laws are said to compel and oblige; ”

“ If the exercise of judicial power be such 'as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of cases to which the one in question belongs,' there has been no deprivation of due process of law. ”

“ In the absence of a clearly expressed legislative intent to the contrary, the court will presume that the law-making power is acting for the future, and does not intend to impair obligations incurred or rights relied upon in the past conduct of men when other legislation was in force. ”

“ So arraigned, he refuses the judgement of the King of the English and his Witan, and appeals from them to the Bishop of Rome. He justifies his appeal by referring to some law other than the law of England, some special law of his own order, by which, he alleges, he is forbidden to submit to any such judgements as that of the national assembly of the realm of which he is a subject. We again instinctively ask, how would William the Great have dealt with such an appeal, if any man had been so hardy as to make it in his hearing? ”

“ The right of the people through its representatives to depose the king, to change the order of succession, and to set on the throne whom they would, was now established. All claim of Divine Right or hereditary right independent of the law was formally put an end to by the election of William and Mary. Since their day no English sovereign has been able to advance any claim to the crown save a claim which rested on a particular clause in a particular Act of Parliament. William, Mary, and Anne, were sovereigns simply by virtue of the Bill of Rights. ”

“ However, there is a distinction between them, authorized by the writers on jurisprudence, and recognized in some of our statutes. I admit the acts of King William and Queen Anne to be fundamental, but they are not the only fundamental laws. The law called Magna Charta, by which it is provided that "no man shall be disseised of his liberties and free customs but by the judgment of his peers or the laws of the land," (meaning clearly, for some proved crime tried and adjudged,) I take to be a fundamental law. ”

“ The Court ruled that as long as the jury had found the facts essential to establish the substantive crime, the protection of the First Amendment against conviction on those facts was a matter of law for the courts to determine. ”

“ But this leaves the question whether Congress also can confer the equity jurisdiction to decree enforcement and at the same time deprive the court of power to consider the validity of the law or regulation and to govern its decree accordingly.
Different considerations, in part, determine this question from those controlling when enforcement is by criminal sanction. The constitutional limitations specially applicable to criminal trials fall to one side. ”

“ When the famous conqueror of England, king William, a kinsman by blood of the same prelate, had subdued the further limits of the island to his sovereignty and cowed the hearts of rebels by terrible examples, he decreed that the subject race should submit to a written law and a written code, to prevent thereafter the existence of an easy means of error. ”

“ HELENA. Pray, sir, your pardon.
BERTRAM. Well, what would you say?
HELENA. I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,
Nor dare I say 'tis mine, and yet it is;
But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal
What law does vouch mine own.
BERTRAM. What would you have?
HELENA. Something; and scarce so much; nothing, indeed.
I would not tell you what I would, my lord.
Faith, yes:
Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.
BERTRAM. I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.
HELENA. I shall not break your bidding, good my lord. ”

“ In order to secure an accurate conception of the legal system, the early growth of which it is proposed to examine, it may be well to premise that the criminal law, which with a substantial uniformity of cardinal ideas now prevails in all civilized states, is well defined as "that branch of juridical law treating of those wrongs which the government notices as injurious to the public, and punishes by what is called a criminal proceeding, in its own name." ”

“ It is elementary that the meaning of a statute must, in the first instance, be sought in the language in which the act is framed, and if that is plain, and if the law is within the constitutional authority of the lawmaking body which passed it, the sole function of the courts is to enforce it according to its terms. ”

“ It must also be conceded to be a rule of the common law in England, as it is in Pennsylvania and many of the other States, that where a statute creates a right and provides a particular remedy for its enforcement, the remedy is generally exclusive of all common-law remedies. ”

“ The application of state law, even without the conflict of laws rules of the forum, would subject the rights and duties of the United States to exceptional uncertainty. It would lead to great diversity in results by making identical transactions subject to the vagaries of the laws of the several states. The desirability of a uniform rule is plain. ”

“ I am constrained to believe that today's decision flows from a view of the Fourth Amendment that is unmindful of the history that begot it and of the purpose for which it was included in the Bill of Rights. And the view of the Amendment which the Court rejects is confirmed by an impressive body of the laws of Congress and of the decisions of this Court. Stern enforcement of the criminal law is the hallmark of a healthy and self-confident society. ”

“ Justice Bradley, speaking for the court, said:
'One thing, however, is unquestionable; the Constitution must have referred to a system of law coextensive with, and operating uniformly in, the whole country. ”

“ Mr. G. H. Williams, Attorney-General, and Mr. S. F. Phillips, Solicitor-General, contra:
No canon for the interpretation of statutes justifies a reference to what was said by particular members of the legislature on the discussion of a bill which subsequently became a law. ”

“ Those courts are creatures of statute, and they have only so much of the judicial power of the United States as the acts of Congress have conferred upon them. The Judiciary Act of 1789, which established them, by its 11th section, enacted that they shall have original cognizance, concurrently with the courts of the several States, of 'all suits of a civil nature at common law, or in equity,' between a citizen of the State in which the suit is brought and a citizen of another State, or where an alien is a party. ”

“ Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish;
Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,
Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismemb'red with thine own defence.
What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.
There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slewest Tybalt. There art thou happy too.
The law, that threat'ned death, becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile. There art thou happy. ”

“ If the opinion of the Court means what it says, we are entering upon a new regime of constitutional law that should give every citizen pause. Heretofore constitutional rights have had greater dignity than rules of evidence. They have constituted guarantees that are inviolable. ”

“ In the extended discussion which has been had upon the meaning and extent of constitutional protection against action without due process of law, it has always been recognized that one who has acquired rights by an administrative or judicial proceeding cannot be deprived of them without notice and an opportunity to be heard. ”

“ FREEMAN, that William introduced a new system, and that he did so either as a new feudal law or as an amendment upon the existing feudalism. The LII. law, quoted by Wright, is as follows:
"We have decreed that all FREE MEN should affirm on oath, that both within and without the whole kingdom of England (which is called Britain) they desire to be faithful to William their lord, and everywhere preserve unto him his land and honors with fidelity, and defend them against all enemies and strangers."
Eadmerus, who wrote in the reign of Henry I., gives the LII. William I. as a confirmatory law. ”