Legal interpretation

“ The reader must bear in mind that the law herein dealt with is the law as it is administered in the legal forms of his country, in no degree changed and in no degree colored by the imagination of the author. Every legal statement represents an established principle, thoroughly analyzed by the courts of last resort. ”

“ But if we take the view of our friend the bad man we shall find that he does not care two straws for the axioms or deductions, but that he does want to know what the Massachusetts or English courts are likely to do in fact. I am much of his mind. The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.
Take again a notion which as popularly understood is the widest conception which the law contains;—the notion of legal duty, to which already I have referred. We fill the word with all the content which we draw from morals. ”

“ When we pass, then, from proved acts, and an inquiry as to the ends sought through them becomes necessary, the legal method is well established, though it has a duality of expression that is sometimes confusing. ”

“ All legally recognized interests of substance in developed legal systems are normally individual interests. To the historical jurist of the nineteenth century, this fact, coupled with the development of ownership out of possession, served to show us the idea which was realizing in human experience of the administration of justice and to confirm the position reached by the metaphysical jurists. ”

“ In construing a statute, penal as well as others, we must look to the object in view, and never adopt an interpretation that will defeat its own purpose, if it will admit of any other reasonable construction. ”

“ The act itself, with all the circumstances of the inhabitants before and at the time of its passage, have formed the subject of legal judgments and professional opinions upon which mighty interests have grown up and now repose. ”

“ What kind of a legist is he who declaims when he ought to reason, who continually mistakes his metaphors for legal axioms, and who does not so much as know how to obtain a universal by induction, and form a category? ”

“ Further, a great part of what I have written is sufficiently free from the technicalities and details of the concrete legal system to serve the purposes of those laymen who, with no desire to adventure themselves among the repellent mysteries of the law, are yet interested in those more general portions of legal theory which touch the problems of ethical and political science. ”

“ Is it possible to analyze the conception represented by this constantly employed and very important term of legal discourse? Too close an analysis might seem metaphysical rather than useful; so that what is here presented is intended only as an approximate explanation sufficient for all practical purposes. ”

“ As is true of many problems in the law, the answer is to be found not in legal learning but in the realities of the record. Though variously expressed in the decisions, the governing principles are clear. ”

“ But, while it is the duty of the courts to put a construction upon statutes which shall, so far as possible, be consonant with good morals, we know of no legal principle which would authorize us to pronounce a statute of this kind, which is plain and unambiguous upon its face, void, by reason of its failure to conform to our own standard of social and moral obligations. ”

“ To that legal or artificial person, once created, the common law of every State, of itself, annexes all those incidents and attributes which are represented as a prostration of the main pillars of their jurisprudence. ”

“ We are not concerned, for example, with the distinction between matters of fact and matters of right, or with that between matters of fact and matters of opinion. Everything is fact for us which is not predetermined by legal principles. It is clear that this is the sense in which this term must inevitably be used, if the distinction between questions of fact and questions of law is to be exhaustive and logical. ”

“ The validity of a legal principle is entirely independent of its truth. It is a valid principle of law, not because it is true, but because it is accepted and acted on by the tribunals of the state. The law is the theory of things, as received and acted on within the courts of justice, and this theory may or may not conform to the reality of things outside. The eye of the law does not infallibly see things as they are. ”

“ Personal statutes are of universal validity; real statutes have no extra-territorial authority. The determination of the class under which a particular law ought to fall is one of great difficulty, and one in which there is often a conflict of legal opinion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This sketch would, of course, have to be modified in many ways if we attempted to treat the unofficial fragments of customary law in the same way as the paragraphs of royal codes, and even more so if we were able to tabulate the indirect evidence as to legal rules. ”

“ In this situation they are frequently to decide, and that upon their oaths, questions of nice importance, in the solution of which some legal skill is requisite; especially where the law and the fact, as it often happens, are intimately blended together. ”

“ Whenever the importance of a thing in law is greater than its importance in fact, we have a legal formality. The formalism of ancient law is too notorious to require illustration, but we are scarcely yet in a position to boast ourselves as above reproach in this matter. ”

“ Under matured systems of jurisprudence a great variety of agreements are denied legal recognition, on the ground that their performance would involve a violation of law, or would be incompatible with good morals or public policy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Evidence of the kind may be admitted for the purpose of defining what is uncertain, but it is never properly admitted to alter a general rule of law, nor to make the legal rights or liabilities of the parties other or different from what they are by the common law. ”

“ When natural Reason, therefore, points out no fixt View of public Utility, by which a Controversy of Property can be decided, positive Laws are often fram'd to supply its Place, and direct the Procedure of all Courts of Judicature. ”

“ One of the most theory-ridden of legal concepts is a 'cause of action.' This Court has recognized its 'shifting meanings' and the danger of determining rights based upon definitions of 'a cause of action' unrelated to the function which the concept serves in a particular situation. ”

“ Nevertheless the gigantic bulk and bewildering difficulties of our own labyrinthine system are far beyond anything that is called for by the necessities of the case. Partly through the methods of its historical development, and partly through the influence of 26that love of subtilty which has always been the besetting sin of the legal mind, our law is filled with needless distinctions, which add enormously to its bulk and nothing to its value, while they render great part of it unintelligible to any but the expert. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And in order that you may thoroughly carry out this principle, procure, if you can, a legal education; because there are a great many flaws in titles, agreements, and the like, the knowledge of which will often enable you to lay hands upon various kinds of property to which at first sight you might appear to have no claim. Should you ever be so circumstanced as to be beyond the control of the law, you will, of course, be able to take whatever you want ”

“ The law includes the whole of the principles accepted and applied in the administration of justice, whether they are imperative principles or not. The only legal rules which conform to the imperative 53definition are those which create legal obligations, and no legal system consists exclusively of rules of this description. All well-developed bodies of law contain innumerable principles which have some other purpose and content than this, and so fall outside the scope of the imperative definition. ”

“ Practical legal exposition acknowledges no call to rise to first principles, or to proceed to ultimate analysis. From the point of view of law as an art, the importance of conceptions and principles varies inversely with their abstractness or generality. Practical jurisprudence proceeds from below upward, and ascends no further than the requirements of use and practice demand. Theoretical jurisprudence, on the contrary, attributes value to the abstract and the general, rather than to the concrete and the particular. ”

“ Every legal person, therefore, has corresponding to it in the world of natural persons certain agents or representatives by whom it acts, and certain beneficiaries on whose behalf it exists and fulfils its functions. ”

“ The law, if it is to be an efficient and workable system, must needs be blind to many things, and the legal theory of things must be simpler than the reality. Partly by deliberate design, therefore, and partly by the errors and accidents of historical development, law and fact, legal theory and the truth of things, are far from complete coincidence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among these he mentions a law which punishes a citizen for an innocent action; a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a judge in his own cause; and a law that takes the property from A. and gives it to B. 'It is against all reason and right,' says the learned justice, 'for a people to intrust a legislature with such powers ”

“ Where the language of a statute is plain, unambiguous, and well understood according to its natural and ordinary sense and meaning, the statute itself furnishes a rule of construction beyond which the court cannot go. ”

“ Its interpretation is accepted as the true interpretation, whatever may be our opinion of its original soundness. It becomes a part of the statute, as much so as if incorporated into the body of it, and in following the statute as thus interpreted we only apply to a local question the law of the place. ”

“ The only motive which urges me to go to law to assert my right to my property is the motive which determines me to acquire it, and which determines the disposition I shall make of it—my interest. Whether I shall go to law to assert my right to my property, or not, is simply a question of interest. ”

“ Wherever an act undertakes to determine a question of right or obligation, or of property, as the foundation upon which it proceeds, such act is to that extent a judicial one, and not the proper exercise of legislative functions. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Such a mode of interpretation only gives occasion to endless difficulty.' Courts have always treated the subject in the same way, when asked to supply words in order to give a statute a particular meaning which it would not bear without them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the two words which, together with law, make up the title of our subject, private is justified by the fact that its application is between litigants in courts of law, and not between governments except so far as they may be such litigants. ”

“ In the last analysis it is for us to determine what is arbitrary or oppressive upon consideration of the natural and inherent principles of practical justice which lie at the base of our traditional jurisprudence and inspirit our Constitution. ”

“ We are enquiring what the law is, not what it ought to be. Reason may be applied to shew the impropriety or expedience of a law, but we must have either statute or precedent to prove the existence of it. At the same time, I do not mean to admit that the late resolution of the house of commons is defensible on general principles of reason, any more than in law. ”

“ On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other.
But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other. ”

“ Jurisprudence corresponds to physiology, Morality to psychology. The laws of reason regarding jurisprudence and moral theory, when transformed into natural laws, give the principles of physiology and psychology. ”