Legal right

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed the Court has held that Congress may for reasons adequate to itself confer bounties upon persons and, by consenting to suit, convert their moral claim into a legal one enforceable by litigation in an undoubted constitutional court. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every individual placed in a position in which he is compelled to defend his legal rights, takes part in this work of the nation, and contributes his mite towards the realization of the idea of law on earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They exhibit a striking specimen of the involutions which ingenuity may cast about legal rights, and an instance of the growing pretensions of some of the State Courts over the exercise of the powers of the general government. ”

“ The right of a peer to be tried by his peers, for example, is neither a right in the strict sense, nor a liberty, nor a power. It is an exemption from trial by jury—an immunity from the power of the ordinary criminal courts.
185. A very thorough examination of the conception of a legal right is to be found in Terry’s Principles of Anglo-American Law (Philadelphia, 1884) , a work of theoretical jurisprudence too little known in England, and characterised by much subtle analysis of legal conceptions. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Legislation, therefore, is the indispensable instrument, not indeed of legal growth, but of legal reform. As a destructive and reformative agent it has no equivalent, and without it all law is as that of the Medes and Persians. ”

“ To withhold from the citizen a right to be heard upon the question which in our jurisprudence is called the constitutionality of a law, when that law is supposed to govern his rights or prescribe his duties, would be as unjust as it would be to deprive him of the right to be heard upon the construction of the law, or upon any other legal question that arises in the cause. The citizen lives under the protection, and is subject to the requirements, of a written fundamental law. ”

“ They assert the power to look beyond the corporation, to presume or to ascertain the residence of the individuals composing it, and to model their decision upon that foundation. In other words, they affirm that in an action at law, the purely legal rights, asserted by one of the parties upon the record, may be maintained by showing or presuming that these rights are vested in some other person who is no party to the controversy before them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And conversely every right must be a right against some person or persons, upon whom, therefore, a correlative duty is imposed. Every right or duty involves a vinculum juris or bond of legal obligation, by which two or more persons are bound together. There can be no duty unless there is some one to whom it is due; there can be no right unless there is some one from whom it is claimed; and there can be no wrong unless there is some one who is wronged, that is to say, whose right has been violated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Legal or equitable rights, acquired under either system of laws, may be enforced in any court of either sovereignty competent to hear and determine such kind of rights and not restrained by its constitution in the exercise of such jurisdiction. ”

“ The primary rights and duties with which jurisprudence busies itself again are nothing but prophecies. One of the many evil effects of the confusion between legal and moral ideas, about which I shall have something to say in a moment, is that theory is apt to get the cart before the horse, and consider the right or the duty as something existing apart from and independent of the consequences of its breach, to which certain sanctions are added afterward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The deduced relation between rational beings—namely, that each individual must restrict his freedom through the conception of the possibility of the freedom of the other—is called the Relation of Legality, Legal Relation; and the formula given to it is called the Fundamental Principle of the Science of Rights. ”

“ From the foregoing considerations as to the advantages and disadvantages which are inherent in the administration of justice according to law, it becomes clear that we must guard against the excessive development of the legal system. If the benefits of law are great, the evils of too much law are not small. The growth of a legal system consists in the progressive encroachment of the sphere of law upon that of fact, the gradual exclusion of judicial discretion by predetermined legal principles. ”

“ All systems do to some extent, and those which recognise precedent as a chief source of law do more especially, show a tendency to carry this process of development too far. Under the influence of the spirit of authority the growth of law goes on unchecked by any effective control, and in course of time the domain of legal principle comes to include much that would be better left to the arbitrium of courts of justice. ”

“ When the law recognises an act as a duty, it commonly enforces the performance of it, or punishes the disregard of it. But this sanction of legal force is in exceptional cases absent. A duty is legal because it is legally recognised, not necessarily because it is legally enforced or sanctioned. There are legal duties of imperfect obligation, as they are 181called, which will be considered by us at a later stage of our inquiry.
§ 72. Rights. A right is an interest recognised and protected by a rule of right. It is any interest, respect for which is a duty, and the disregard of which is a wrong. ”

“ Wherever, by either the common law or the statute law of a State, a right of action has become fixed and a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued in any court which has jurisdiction of such matters and can obtain jurisdiction of the parties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It must remain so for the protection of the rights of the people. If courts can change its meaning as occasion requires, the will of the court and not the constitution, is the supreme law of the land. The decisions of courts, in the recent conflicts between railroad corporations and the people, and upon the legal tender question, demonstrate that the will of the court is already the supreme law of the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. There can be no question as to the probable truth of these legal conclusions. They are as certainly established as it is possible for the decisions of courts to establish any principle of law. ”