Inviolability

“ Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? ”

“ Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. ”

“ For, after all, what should be the test of the amount of coercion or control which law has a right to exert over individual liberty? Does it desire the moral death of the sinner, or that he be converted and live? Should the main purpose of punishment be retaliation against a criminal, or reformation? ”

“ This account of the considerations which have regulated the punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with the crime in order to the protection of the right. ”

“ The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our State governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. ”

“ The law, my lords, is the measure of political, as conscience of moral right; and he that breaks no law, may indeed be criminal, but is not punishable. The law likewise prescribes the method of prosecuting guilt; and as we, by omitting any crime in our laws, disable ourselves from punishing it, however publick or flagrant, so by regulating the process in our courts of justice, we give security to that guilt, which by that process cannot be detected. ”

“ If they are caught in their own toils, and are themselves the sufferers, it is a legitimate consequence of their violation of the rules of law and morality. Those who violate these laws must suffer the penalty. ”

“ To censure guilt, my lords, is undoubtedly necessary, and to inquire into the conduct of men in power, incontestably just; but by the laws both of heaven and earth, the means as well as the end are prescribed, rectum recte, legitimum legitime faciendum; we must not only propose a good end in our conduct, but must attain it by that method which equity directs, and the law prescribes. ”

“ Whichsoever of these positions be true, the defence set up on behalf of the respondent is false. What have you seen? A man condemned to death, unheard, by a prejudiced jury and an unrighteous judge, thirsting for his blood; the Executive demanding to hear that defence, to which the Court would not listen, and extending the arm of its protection to snatch the victim from the oppressor’s [276] grasp. And will you now turn this man loose upon society, armed with the terrors of the law and secure in impunity, to perpetrate similar offences? ”

“ For the practical purposes of modern law we may divide torts into three groups, wrongs of a personal character, wrongs affecting property, and wrongs affecting person and property, either or both. Under the first group come the wrongs of physical violence and restraint, namely, assault and false imprisonment; then the wrong done to men's good name by libel and slander, in which kind there are sundry curious and not wholly rational distinctions ”

“ We believe that men should appeal to the civil law for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted, or the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will protect the same; but we believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends and property, and the government, from the unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons, in times of exigencies, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws, and relief afforded. ”

“ Every word of the court had been an accusation, a sneer, an acceptance of the defendant's guilt as a matter of course, an abuse far more subversive of our theory of government than the mere acquittal of a single criminal, for it struck at the very foundations of that liberty which the fathers had sought the shores of the unknown continent to gain. ”

“ The violation, then, consists in using a power, granted for one object, to advance another, and that by a sacrifice of the original object. It is, in a word, a violation of perversion, the most dangerous of all, because the most insidious, and difficult to resist. ”

“ It is a double wrong to punish the innocent for the guilty. It is the infliction of injustice on the one hand, and the omission of justice on the other. It inflicts the highest penalty of the law upon an innocent being, whom that law ought to shield from punishment, while it exculpates and liberates the guilty party, whose punishment the moral law demands. ”

“ Those that were great in wealth and high in place, My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I held my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right. And for the greater security of the weak commons, he gave general liberty of indicting for an act of injury; if any one was beaten, maimed, or suffered any violence, any man that would and was able, might prosecute the wrongdoer; intending by this to accustom the citizens, like members of the same body, to resent and be sensible of one another's injuries. ”

“ Guilty or innocent, they have appeared in judgment, and the law has acquitted them. You urge upon the people now a crime greater than theirs. Two wrongs do not make a right. Who are you to raise yourself above that power which is supreme? ”

“ So that wholesale homicide, condemned alike by religion, by equity, by law, is approved, and the mildest punishment of it blamed; while vulpicide, committed in defence of property, and condemned neither by religion, nor by equity, nor by any law save that of sportsmen, excites an anger that cries aloud for positive penalties! ”

“ What the effect upon society in general must be, of letting it be understood, that there is a crime which must not, or cannot, be restrained or punished, because peers and ‘gentlemen’ think proper to commit it, while the law declares it to be felony, we leave those to judge who know the power of example, and the aptness of the lower orders to learn evil from their betters. ”

“ Lawyers distinguish betwixt malum prohibitum and malum in se; that is, between crimes that are so in their own nature, and crimes that owe their pravity to a disobedience to positive laws. Of the former sort are all those actions, by which one man hurts another in his reputation, his person, or his fortune; and those actions are still more heinous, if they injure, or are intended to injure, the whole society. ”

“ And if we do; then our affection or respect for the law is entirely one-sided and impure. And the people who make laws and devise punishments upon those unequal premises are not at all likely to make their laws just, or their forms of punishment wise. ”

“ VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or retained, but in the case determined by the law, and under the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, forward, execute, or cause to be punished. Every citizen called on or arrested by the power of the law, ought to obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance. ”

“ Every violation of a moral law or natura?? obligation, is an injury for which the offender ought to make retribution to the individuals who immediately suffer from it, and is also a crime for which he ought to be punished to that extent which would deter both him and others from a repetition of the offence. ”

“ The idea of punishment implies on the side of the person punished at once a capacity for determination by the conception of a common or public good, or in other words a practical understanding of the nature of rights as founded on relations to such public good, and an actual violation of a right or omission to fulfil an obligation, the right or obligation being one of which the agent might have been aware and the violation or omission one which he might have prevented. ”

“ J. C. That kind of proceeding is not only unjust, but unreasonable also— (here was some interruption,) and against the laws aforesaid, which say, No man shall be taken or imprisoned but by warrant, or due process of law: so that this speech of the recorder’s, savours more of passion than justice; and cruelty, than due observance of law; for every forcible restraint of a man’s liberty, is an imprisonment in law. ”

“ To injure a person, is unlawfully to take or withhold from him that to which he has a just claim. To deprive one of life, liberty, or his personal or real estate, which he has not forfeited by crime, is the grossest violation of this principle. No one, we presume, can consistently bear the Christian's name, who is guilty in either of these respects. But there are other respects in which we may injure our neighbor, without depriving him of either his life, liberty or property We may injure him by rash and precipitate judging, by indulging uncharitable thoughts , and by evil speaking. ”

“ A violation of law may become so common that there is no public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may happen in morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. ”

“ Should any private man, my lords, offer a reward to any that would give evidence against another, without specifying the crime of which he is accused, doubtless he would be considered by the laws of this nation, as a violator of the rights of society, an open slanderer, and a disturber of mankind ”

“ PERSON, OFFENCES AGAINST THE. This expression is used in English law to classify crimes involving some form of assault or personal violence or physical injury, i.e. offences affecting the life, liberty or safety of an individual, but it is also extended to certain offences against morality which cannot technically be described as assaults. ”

“ The violation of right in one case is proceeded against by the method of indictment, in the other by an 'action.' The distinction that in one case punishment is the object of the process, in the other redress, is introduced in order to explain the difference of procedure; and to justify this distinction resort is had to the further distinction, that civil injury is considered to affect the individual merely, crime to affect the state. ”

“ A State may 'direct its law against what it deems the evil as it actually exists without covering the whole field of possible abuses, and it may do so none the less that the forbidden act does not differ in kind from those that are allowed.' Central Lumber Co. ”

“ The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law's interference—the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief. ”

“ If, on the contrary, one be different from the other, either the laws will no longer be respected, or the received notions of morality and probity will vanish in spite of the declamations of moralists, which are always too weak to resist the force of example. If we declare those actions infamous, which are in themselves indifferent, we lessen the infamy of those which are really infamous. ”

“ They will not be calmed by letting violence loose-violence and defiance employed and encouraged by those upon whom the duty of law observance should have the strongest claim-nor by submitting to it under whatever guise employed. ”

“ It is necessary that the infamy inflicted by the laws should be the same with that which results from the relations of things, from universal morality, or from that particular system, adopted by the nation, and the laws, which governs the opinion of the vulgar. ”

“ Observe, that by justice I understand nothing more than that bond, which is necessary to keep the interest of individuals united; without which, men would return to their original state of barbarity. All punishments, which exceed the necessity of preserving this bond, are in their nature unjust. We should be cautious how we associate with the word justice, an idea of anything real, such as a physical power, or a being that actually exists. ”

“ To the inhibition of Holy Writ is added the cumulative if inferential prohibition of the Law, which declines to consider inebriety, though extreme enough in degree to impair if not destroy the reasoning faculty, in mitigation of crime of the highest—— dignity. ”

“ That law which alloweth comparative re-offending, so as to kill rather than be killed, teacheth resistance: but so the law of nature alloweth, except we be guilty of murder in the culpable omission of self defence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I know of no law which inflicts a punishment upon intention only or any criterion by which to decide what would be sufficient evidence of that intention * * much less would I assume power to exercise it against men whom I consider as friends and brothers, in favor of a man whom I view as an enemy and a tyrant. ”

“ Accordingly, we are here confronted with a statute which, by its own words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action. ”