Composition (law)

“ How striking and instructive to observe the abstract rules of justice brought to bear, with equal readiness and precision, upon ordinary and extraordinary combinations of circumstances!—to witness the dead letter of the law become animated with potent vitality for the regulation of human affairs! ”

“ Moreover, these statutes, which at any moment may revolutionize a man's liberty or his property, are not as they were in old times—a mere codification, or attempt at the best expression of a law already existing and well "understanded of the people" ”

“ So great is the superiority of legislation over all other methods of legal evolution, that the tendency of advancing civilisation is to acknowledge its exclusive claim, and to discard the other instruments as relics of the infancy of law. The expressed will of the state tends to obtain recognition not only as the sole formal source of law, but as its exclusive material source also. Statute law has already become the type or standard, from which the other forms are more or less abnormal variations. ”

“ When a statute alters the common law the meaning shall not be strained beyond the meaning of the words, except in cases of public utility, as when the end in view appears to be more comprehensive than the enacting words. ”

“ Νόμος is used in a very wide sense to include any human institution, anything established or received among men, whether by way of custom, opinion, convention, law or otherwise. It was contrasted, at least in the language of the philosophers, with φύσις, or nature. That which is natural is το φυσικόν; that which is artificial, owing its origin to the art and invention of mankind, is τὸ νομικόν. It is often said that the earliest meaning of νόμος is custom. ”

“ By the concepts of law, State, and property one may understand, first, the concepts of law, State, and property in the science of a particular legal system.
These concepts of law, State, and property contain all the characteristics that belong to the substance of a particular legal system. They embrace only the substance of this system. They may, therefore, be called concepts of the science of this system. For we may designate as the science of a particular legal system that part of jurisprudence which concerns itself exclusively with the norms of a particular legal system. ”

“ It is a rule of law, in the construction of all statutes, contracts and legal instruments whatsoever—that is, those which courts design, not to invalidate, but to enforce—that where words are susceptible of two meanings, one consistent, and the other inconsistent, with liberty, justice and right, that sense is always to be adopted, which is consistent with right, unless there be something in other parts of the instrument sufficient to prove that the other is the true meaning. ”

“ The nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. ”

“ For the present we declare, as we have a perfect right to do, that the deduced conception, X, the reality whereof has been proven in our deduction, is to be called in this our investigation the conception of Law or Rights, holding ourselves responsible to prove by it whatever questions common sense may raise concerning Law. ”

“ But law, strictly speaking, is simply the rule of action itself, as for instance, an Act of Parliament; but as in practice all such rules are enforced by a sanction of some kind, our conception of a law is also united with that of a lawgiver, who has both the right and the power to enforce it. ”

“ In the formation of the law, regard should be often had to the convenience, to the faculties, to the interests, and to the habits of the citizens, sometimes even to their prejudices, but in the interpretation of it, nothing but justice should be regarded. ”

“ We can see the policeman on his beat, or the judge in court, or the members of the legislature—the men who, respectively, maintain, administer, and make the laws; and we can see the record of the laws in books. But the idea or principle of Law which has caused men to construct all this machinery for the making and enforcing of the laws, exists only in the mind. ”

“ It is in such ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds, governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations; while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution, everything, in harmony with the public sentiment of their class and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their interpretations of law. ”

“ It is necessary it should be on behalf of right. There is another law of legal interpretation, which is, that the law is to be understood in the light of the objects sought for by the law, or sought in the law - that is, that the details of the law shall conform to the purpose declared to be sought to be attained by it. ”

“ Law reflects distinctions that exist in fact or at least appear to exist in the judgment of legislators those who have the responsibility for making law fit fact. Legislation is essentially empiric. It addresses itself to the more or less crude outside world and not to the neat, logical models of the mind. Classification is inherent in legislation; the Equal Protection Clause has not forbidden it. To recognize marked differences that exist in fact is living law; to disregard practical differences and concentrate on some abstract identities is lifeless logic. ”

“ Rules, that is, definite, detailed provisions for definite, detailed states of fact, are the main reliance of the beginnings of law. In the maturity of law they are employed chiefly in situations where there is exceptional need of certainty in order to uphold the economic order. With the advent of legal writing and juristic theory in the transition from the strict law to equity and natural law, a second [Pg 116] element develops and becomes a controlling factor in the administration of justice. ”

“ I believe in law and order; but I believe, as a condition precedent, that law and order should be predicated upon right and justice, pure and simple. Law is, intrinsically, a written expression of justice; if, on the contrary, it becomes instead written injustice, men are not, strictly speaking, bound to yield it obedience. ”

“ Whatever might be the answer of a moralist to this question, a jurist must search for its legal solution, in those principles of action which are sanctioned by the usages, the national acts, and the general assent, of that portion of the world of which he considers himself as a part, and to whose law the appeal is made. ”

“ The subject of the civil law, the ego, the object of the civil law, the objective or natural world, the relation between the two, or property—such is, in a word, the method; the equality of all men before the law is its principle; the respect for property and the directness of litigation are its aims. ”

“ It is wisely ordered, therefore, that the principles and axioms of law, which are general propositions flowing from abstracted reason, and not accommodated to times or men, should be deposited in the breasts of the judges, to be occasionally applied to such facts as come properly ascertained before them. ”

“ Visigothic Theory Of Law.
Legislation is almost always imperative; it prescribes or interdicts; each legal provision usually corresponds to some fact which it either ordains or prohibits. Rarely does it happen that a law, or code of laws, are preceded by a theory on the origin and nature of power, the object and philosophic character of law, and the right and duty of the legislator. ”

“ It is requisite that the law should postulate one or more first causes, whose operation is ultimate, and whose authority is underived. In other words there must be found in every legal system certain ultimate principles, from which all others are derived, but which are themselves self-existent. Before there can be any talk of legal sources, there must be already in existence some law which establishes them and gives them their authority. ”

“ In these circumstances there will arise the habit, both on the part of lawyers and of citizens, of reverencing the forms of law more than the principles which lie behind them. The purposes by which all legislation should be animated and determined will come to be habitually overlooked. Questions of right and justice will be ruled out as irrelevant, the highest and only solicitude being as to the binding phraseology of specific clauses. ”

“ Legislative law, when moving freely on its own lines, is as far as possible rational. In so far as customary law is contained in propositions or judgments its language follows general usage, and shares therefore in the indefiniteness and uncertainty of usage. ”

“ That the law may be a rule of action, it is necessary that it be known; it is necessary that it be permanent and stable. The law is the measure of civil right; but, if the measure be changeable, the extent of the thing measured never can be settled. ”

“ A theory which regards the law as the command of the state and nothing more, and which entirely ignores the aspect of law as a public declaration of the principles of justice, would lose all its plausibility, if expressed in a language in which the term for law signifies justice also. ”

“ It is necessary, therefore, for us to understand correctly, and to understand with precision and accuracy, exactly what the law means by them, because they have a legal meaning; they have a meaning that is peculiar to the law ”

“ In consequence of this divergence, partly intentional and avowed, partly accidental and unavowed, between the law and the fact of possession, it is impossible that any abstract theory should completely harmonise with the detailed rules to be found in any concrete body of law. Such harmony would be possible only in a legal system which had developed with absolute logical rigour, undisturbed by historical accidents, and unaffected by any of those special considerations 238which in all parts of the law prevent the inflexible and consistent recognition of general principles. ”

“ DEDUCTION OF AN EQUILIBRIUM OF RIGHTS.—All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. ”

“ Remedies of a statutory character, where the right to be enforced was unknown at the common law, are to be followed with strictness, both as to the methods to be pursued and the cases to which they are to be applied. ”

“ For the convenience of analysis, we may treat the obligations correlative to rights, obligations which it is the proper office of law to enforce, apart from moral duties and from the virtues which are tendencies to fulfil those duties. ”

“ Justice Field, in The Moses Taylor, said: 'That clause only saves to suitors 'the right of a common-law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it.' It is not a remedy in the common-law courts which is saved, but a common-law remedy. ”

“ The answer to this question arises out of the above consideration of the means which law employs to obtain the fulfilment of obligations, combined with the view of law as relative to a moral end, i.e. the formation of a society of persons, acting from a certain disposition, from interest in the society as such. ”

“ which ought seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in a doubtful case.' 'The opposition between the constitution and the law should be such, that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.' And in the Dartmouth College case, 4 Wheat. ”

“ Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law. ”

“ If it be such an exercise of power '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 classes to which the one in question belongs,' it is due process of law. ”

“ Constitutional law and practice react upon each other, each striving to assimilate the other to itself. The objective facts of state organisation tend to mould legal theory into conformity with themselves. They seek expression and recognition through legislation, or through the law-creating functions of the courts. Conversely, the accepted legal theory endeavours to realise itself in the facts. The law, although it necessarily involves a pre-existing constitution, may nevertheless react upon and influence the constitution from which it springs. ”

“ Certain general clauses, e.g., that pledging that justice should neither be bought nor sold, and that prescribing that a freeman might not be imprisoned, outlawed, or dispossessed of his property save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, meant in effect considerably less than they sometimes have been interpreted to mean. ”

“ Such a possession is only possible in a state of civil society. In civil society, a declaration by word or act that an external thing is mine and making it an object of the exercise of my will is "a juridical act." ”

“ The reasoning by which it is attempted to support it is too artificial to be applied to such an instrument as the constitution,-the organic law of a great nation,-which deals only in generals, and cannot, from its nature, be expected to descend into details. ”

“ The elements approach is grounded in the Rule's history, which demonstrates that that approach was settled doctrine at the time of the Rule's promulgation and thereafter, and that the Rule incorporated this established practice by restating the pre-existing law. ”