Legal principle

“ The Constitution guarantees the principle of legality, the hierarchy of legal provisions, the publicity of legal statutes, the non-retroactivity of punitive provisions that are not favourable to or restrictive of individual rights, the certainty that the rule of law shall prevail, the accountability of public authorities, and the prohibition of arbitrary action of public authorities. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When, therefore, in an ordinary trial in an action at law we speak of the common law we refer to the law of the state as it has been adopted by statute or recognized by the courts as the foundation of legal rights. It is in regard to decisions made by the state courts in reference to this law, and defining what is the law of the state as modified by the opinions of its own courts, by the statutes of the state, and the customs and habits of the people, that the trouble arises. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Conceding, or better realizing, this inherently fluctuating character or quality of public policy, we see that the enactment of statutes to declare or define it must of necessity be a dangerous business, because such statutes, however accurately they reflect the public policy of the moment of their enactment, must almost immediately begin to be wrong. The Common Law, reposing, according to the legal fiction, in the bosom of the court, is flexible, and can change or be changed, as we have seen, with the change of condition ”

“ Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the visitation and superintendence of a college and the appointment of its officers, may surely be vested rights, to all legal intents, as completely as the right to possess property. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may be taken to imply that rights and obligations can exist in a 'state of nature'—a state in which every individual is free to do as he likes—; that legal rights and obligations derive their authority from a voluntary act by which individuals contracted themselves out of this state; and that the individual retains from the state of nature certain rights with which no legal obligations ought to conflict. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No less service will be rendered by the twentieth-century philosophical theory, whatever it is, which puts the jural postulate of civilized society in our day and place with respect to good faith, and its corollary as to promises, in acceptable form, and furnishes jurist and judge and lawmaker with a logical critique, a workable measure of decision and an ideal of what the law seeks to do, whereby to carry forward the process of enlarging the domain of legally enforceable promises and thus enlarging on this side the domain of legal satisfaction of human claims. ”

“ 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 ”

“ As those rights which it is the duty of courts of justice to protect and enforce include equitable as well as legal rights, and as each of these classes of rights requires separate treatment, it will be convenient to begin with legal rights. ”

“ For, being totally disengaged from the detail of juridical practice, we come something perhaps the better qualified, and certainly much the better disposed, to assert the genuine principle of the laws, in which we can, as a body, have no other than an enlarged and a public interest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an old principle of the Common Law, recognized by all our courts, as announced by Lord Coke, that, “where the law granteth anything to any one, that also is granted without which the thing itself cannot be.” ”

“ But while the realization in practice of public law and of criminal law is assured, because it is imposed as a duty on public officials, the realization in practice of private law is presented to individuals under the form of their legal rights; that is, it is left exclusively to them to take the initiative in its realization, left exclusively to their action. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States, in creating and defining the judicial power of the General Government, establishes this distinction between law and equity, and a party who claims a legal title must proceed at law, and may undoubtedly proceed according to the forms of practice in such cases in the State court. ”

“ Legal tribunals have also powerfully assisted to shape and modify conceptions of proprietary right by means of the distinction between Law and Equity, which always makes its first appearance as a distinction between jurisdictions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When one of the superior courts of law has, after solemn argument and full consideration, laid down a certain principle as one fit to be applied to the case in hand, there is a reasonable presumption that this decision is correct, and that the principle is a just one fit to be applied to all similar cases in the future, that is to say, fit to receive permanent recognition as a new rule of law. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The doctrines upon the subjects of joint and several interests under a deed, and of the necessity or propriety for conformity with remedies for enforcing those interests to the nature of the interests themselves, have been maintained by a course of decision as unbroken and perspicuous, perhaps, as those upon which any other rule or principle can be shown to rest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Positive law floats in the midst between the Conception of Rights and the Decision of Law In positive law, the rule of Rights is applied to particular objects; in the decisions of law, the positive law is applied to particular persons. ”

“ It is a rule founded upon the first principles of natural justice, older than written constitutions, that a citizen shall not be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, without an opportunity to be heard in defense of his rights, and the constitutional provision that no person shall be deprived of these 'without due process of law' has its foundation in this rule. ”

“ It is surprising how seldom we find in judicial utterances 176any explicit recognition of the fact that in deciding questions on principle, the courts are in reality searching out the rules and requirements of natural justice and public policy. The measure of the prevalence of such ethical over purely technical considerations is the measure in which case-law develops into a rational and tolerable system as opposed to an unreasoned product of authority and routine. ”

“ Right Of Action.—Any person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or political subdivision of a State, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any person to the deprivation of the rights, privileges, or immunities set forth in this section, shall be liable to the person so deprived in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For since the law declares the expression of the will to possess something to be the ground of all property, and since both parties express that will at the same time, both parties have an equal right before the law. ”

“ 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" ”