Legal privilege

“ As indicated in the above scheme of jural relations, a privilege is the opposite of a duty, and the correlative of a "no-right." In the example last put, whereas X has a right or claim that Y, the other man, should stay off the land, he himself has the privilege of entering on the land; or, in equivalent words, X does not have a duty to stay off. The privilege of entering is the negation of a duty to stay off. ”

“ Thus, we may view the historical development of the privilege as one which groped for the proper scope of governmental power over the citizen. As a "noble principle often transcends its origins," the privilege has come rightfully to be recognized in part as an individual's substantive right, a "right to a private enclave where he may lead a private life. ”

“ The right to practise law in the courts as a profession, is a privilege granted by the law, under such limitations or conditions in each state or government as the law-making power may prescribe. It is a privilege, and not an absolute right. The distinction may be illustrated by the difference between the right of a party to a suit in court to defend his own cause, and the right of another to appear and defend for him. The one, like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is inalienable. ”

“ The degree of privilege to which each class of aliens was entitled was different, but the claim of each to the privileges annexed by law to his class, was equally well established; and the one could no more, with justice, or by law, be deprived of his inferior privileges, than the other could of his more extensive ones. ”

“ On the other hand, a man’s rights of personal liberty, and of reputation, and of freedom from bodily harm are personal, not proprietary. They concern his welfare, not his wealth; they are juridical merely, not also economic. So also with the rights of a husband and father with respect to his wife and children. Rights such as these constitute his legal status, not his legal estate. ”

“ Suits to redress the deprivation of privilege secured by the constitution of the United States must be brought in a United States court. It is a crime to conspire to prevent the free exercise and enjoyment of any privilege, or to conspire to deprive any person of equal privileges and immunities, or under colour of law to subject any inhabitant of a state or territory to the deprivation of any privileges or immunities (Revised Statutes of United States, §§ 5507, 5510, 5519) . ”

“ That great purpose can be completely frustrated by holdings like this. I would hold that no State can put any kind of penalty on any person for claiming a privilege authorized by the Federal Constitution. ”

“ An otherwise valid statute or ordinance conferring a privilege, is not rendered invalid merely because it chances that particular persons find it hard or even impossible to comply with precedent conditions upon which enjoyment of the privilege is made to depend. ”

“ And if it has been so great an advantage over others in regulating civil property, how much must that advantage be heightened when it is applied to criminal cases. * * * It is the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy, or wish for, that he cannot be affected either in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of 12 of his neighbors and equals. ”

“ The Court depends upon N.A.A.C.P. v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963) , to support its position. But there the vital fact was that the claimed privilege was a 'form of political expression' to secure, through court action, constitutionally protected civil rights. ”

“ These circumstances present all the elements which justify resort to the fiction of law by which a person who, in equity and good conscience, was the real owner at the time of an unlawful conversion, is to be regarded, as against the wrongdoer, to have had the legal title and possession, by relation, in him at the time of such conversion, and therefore as having had such a title and possession as, when his disability to assert his rights no longer exists, will entitle him to maintain an action of trover. ”

“ There is no generic term which is the correlative of right in the wide sense, and includes all the burdens imposed by the law, as a right includes all the benefits conferred by it. These legal burdens are of three kinds, being either Duties, Disabilities, or Liabilities. A duty is the absence of liberty; a disability is the absence of power; a liability is the presence either of liberty or of power vested in some one else as against the person liable. ”

“ It amounts to indifference to present legal duty, and to utter forgetfulness of legal obligations so far as other persons may be affected. It is a heedless and palpable violation of legal duty respecting the rights of others. ”

“ No citizen shall arbitrarily be deprived of his life, liberty, or property. This the legislature cannot do, nor authorize to be done. 'Due process of law' is not confined to judicial proceedings, but extends to every case which may deprive a citizen of life, liberty, or property ”

“ I believe that privilege extends to any evidence that a person is compelled to furnish against himself. Id., at 33-35, 93 S.Ct., at 782-783. At the very least, the privilege includes evidence that can be obtained only through the person's affirmative cooperation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Possessing this right, and acknowledging the obligation, it is their further right and duty, whenever they see the laws which they have made trampled upon, distorted, or prostituted, to rise in their sovereign privilege, remove such unfaithful servants, lawfully if possible, arbitrarily if necessary. ”

“ If the privilege or exemption was merely personal, it can hardly be supposed, that it would have been thought a matter sufficiently important to require a special provision in the constitution and laws of the United States. ”

“ Article III of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights intend that people [4] shall not have valuable rights and privileges taken away from them by government unless the deprivation occurs after some kind of court proceeding where witnesses can be confronted and questioned and where the public can know that the rights of individuals are being protected. ”

“ Too much judicial inquiry into the claim of privilege would force disclosure of the thing the privilege was meant to protect, while a complete abandonment of judicial control would lead to intolerable abuses. ”

“ It is to citizens that the privilege is granted, and that they may unite themselves in such modes in all other pursuits was, as a matter of course, well known to those who framed as well as to those who passed the statute. ”

“ I think no one—no lawyer, certainly—will now deny that it is a legal rule of interpretation—that must be applied to all statutes, and also to all private contracts that are to be enforced—that an innocent meaning, and nothing beyond an innocent meaning, must be given to all language that will possibly bear such a meaning. ”

“ Even vested rights are subject to the law of welfare involved in the original act establishing special privileges. Public use, not private interest, is the true reason for the existence of any such privileges or protection. ”

“ In our survey of the various popular acceptations of justice, the term appeared generally to involve the idea of a personal right—a claim on the part of one or more individuals, like that which the law gives when it confers a proprietary or other legal right. Whether the injustice consists in depriving a person of a possession, or in breaking faith with him, or in treating him worse than he deserves, or worse than other people who have no greater claims, in each case the supposition implies two things—a wrong done, and some assignable person who is wronged. ”

“ Let poverty have her peers also.” “My poverty and not my will consented” is a phrase to which too little consideration is given when we discuss the question of crime and punishment; for though poverty cannot be pleaded by the criminal in justification of his offence (nor should such justification be permitted in the legal view) , Society, whose interests are represented by the tribunal which adjudges, should be careful that any circumstances or defects in its conformation which may have had a tendency even to induce the criminality of the culprit, should go in mitigation of his punishment. ”

“ One prohibition is, "that no person shall be deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of his peers or the law of the land." ”

“ The privilege against self-incrimination, safeguarding a complex of significant values, represents a broad exception to governmental power to compel the testimony of the citizenry. The privilege can be claimed in any proceeding, be it criminal or civil, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory. ”

“ The contention is expressed and illustrated in a number of ways, and the privilege of a citizen is defined to be 'the right to pursue and obtain happiness and safety' and 'to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others,' and that whatever rights a state grants to its own citizens are the measure within its jurisdiction of the rights of the citizens of other states, and for these propositions the Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. ”

“ Our lawyers to-day are so far from believing that the balance of Justice should, in private law as well as in criminal law, weigh the injustice which has been done, and not only the pecuniary interest, that, in daring to speak about it, I must expect to hear it objected that in this precisely lies the difference between criminal law and the law pertaining to the rights of persons. ”

“ But I pass this discrimination and return to the law as a violation of the employer's rights considered absolutely and abstractly. It seems to me to be of the very foundation of right of the essence of liberty as it is of morals-to be free from liability if one is free from fault. ”

“ Recognizing the difficulty in defining with exactness the phrase "due process of law," it is certain that these words imply a conformity with natural and inherent principles of justice, and forbid that one man's property, or right to property, shall be taken for the benefit of another, or for the benefit of the State, without compensation; and that [p391] no one shall be condemned in his person or property without an opportunity of being heard in his own defence. ”

“ Tell them that you insist upon their being absolutely under your direction and control, that you expect to grant them all reasonable privileges, but that they must be regarded as privileges, and not as rights. ”

“ Let me premise the statement that the protection of the rights of life, liberty, and property is peculiarly within the province of the criminal law. What constitutes the right of life, liberty, and property can not be defined or described, except negatively by a definition of what will be deemed its infringements. ”

“ The affirmative enforcement of the rights and privileges themselves, unless something more is expressed, does not devolve upon it, but belongs to the state government as a part of its residuary sovereignty.' 1 Woods, 308, 314-316. ”

“ These authorities go as far as authority can go to establish the principle, that it is not only within the power, but it is the duty, of a State to deny to strangers privileges not permitted to its own citizens. ”