Right (law)

“ For the essence of legal right is, as I have frequently remarked already, action. What the air is to the flame, freedom of action is to the feeling of legal right. Refuse it this freedom, and the feeling dies. ”

“ These wonders are the work of law. It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ of the will of all which establishes, in civil right, the natural equality between men. ”

“ It is that of the general will, which can neither be alienated nor represented. Is the prince above the law? The answer is, He is a member of the state, and cannot be so. Can the law be unjust? No one can be unjust to himself: therefore not the whole people to the whole people. How can we be free and yet subject to the laws? The laws are the register of our own will. (Ib.) Laws, in short, are properly those general 'conditions of civil association' which the associates impose on themselves. ”

“ But it is clearly laid down as a fundamental principle of the all-pervasive common law, that rights given by the Creator are unalienable, [Pg 17] and that no human being, however emphatically he may declare, or will, or agree to the contrary, may by any possible act of any other human being or of any set of human beings, whether calling themselves a government or not, or by any possible means, deprive himself, or be deprived of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—these being necessarily incidental to the original right of equality. ”

“ There are rules anterior to all positive laws. I cannot grant that the action of conscience and the idea of right are the work of the legislator. It is not law that made the family, property, liberty, equality, the idea of good and evil. ”

“ But the essential questions are: (1) whether we are entitled to distinguish the rights and obligations which are anywhere actually enforced by law from rights and obligations which really exist though not enforced; and (2) , if we are entitled to do so, what is to be our criterion of rights and obligations which are really valid, in distinction from those that are actually enforced.
9. No one would seriously maintain that the system of rights and obligations, as it is anywhere enforced by law,—the 'jus' or 'Recht' of any nation—is all that it ought to be. ”

“ Also we must realize that the authority that makes the law is itself superior to it, and that if it consents to apply to itself the rules that it applies to others the consent is free and may be withheld. ”

“ But, good or bad, as laws in this country are merely the expression of the people’s will, they should be respected as long as they remain laws. For law is just as necessary to the human race as is the air we breathe or the food we eat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I believe in law and order; but I believe, as a condition precedent, that law and order should be predicated upon right and justice, pure and simple. Law is, intrinsically, a written expression of justice; if, on the contrary, it becomes instead written injustice, men are not, strictly speaking, bound to yield it obedience. ”

“ The objection to calling them 'innate' or 'natural,' when once it is admitted on the one side that rights are not arbitrary creations of law or custom but that there are certain powers which ought to be secured as rights, on the other hand that there are no rights antecedent to society, none that men brought with them into a society which they contracted to form, is mainly one of words. ”

“ “The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done—the right should make the law.” ”

“ Hence the struggle for one’s legal rights is, at the same time, a struggle for the law. There is question not alone of a personal interest, of a single relation in which the law has been incorporated, of a photographic picture, as I have called it, in which a transient ray of the law has perpetuated itself, and which may be broken up and divided without affecting the law; but there is a question of the law itself which has been despised, trampled under foot, and which must be defended, if the law itself is not to become a mockery and a word without meaning. ”

“ This idealism of the healthy feeling of legal right would undermine its own foundation if it confined itself to the defense of its own rights only, without taking any part in the maintenance of law and order. It knows not only that in defending its own legal rights it defends the law, but that in defending the law it defends its own legal rights. ”

“ Though this doctrine may make sad havoc with constitutions and statute books, it is nevertheless law. It fixes and determines the real rights of all men; and its demands are as imperious as any that can exist under the name of law. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What an immense importance does the struggle of the individual for his rights thus obtain! How far below the height of this ideal, universal interest in the law, lies the sphere of that which is purely individual, the region of personal interests, aims, and passions which the uncultured man looks upon as the real domain of the law!
But that height, many may say, is so great that it is visible only to the eyes of the philosophy of law; it is never thought of in practical life; no one institutes an action for the sake of the idea of law. ”

“ The great principle of the common law, which is equally the teaching of Christian morality, so to use one's property as not to injure others, forbids any other application or use of the rights and powers conferred. ”

“ The rule of law, Restrict your freedom through the conception of the freedom of all other persons with whom you come in contact! receives, it is true, a new sanction for conscience through the Moral Law; but the deduction of this sanction forms a part of the Science of Morality, and does not belong to the Science of Rights. ”

“ This ideal conception of the law is not a privilege of characters highly endowed by nature; but it is as accessible to the coarsest as to the most cultured, to the richest as to the poorest, to savage and to civilized nations; and, just here, we discover so clearly how firmly rooted in the innermost nature of the law this idealism is—it is nothing but the healthfulness of the feeling of legal right. ”

“ The law lays down the only standard by which the acts of the citizen are to be governed. What the law permits is right, else it would prohibit it. What the law prohibits is wrong, because it punishes it. ”

“ The defense of one’s concrete legal rights, when these rights are attacked, is a duty of the individual whose rights have been invaded, not only to himself, but also to society? If what I have said be true, that in defending his legal right he, at the same time, defends the law, and in the law that public order which is indispensable, who can deny that, in defending them, he fulfills a duty to the commonwealth? ”

“ This grand right—the sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord—frees us from all preliminary responsibility to the law ”

“ It is in such ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds, governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations; while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution, everything, in harmony with the public sentiment of their class and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their interpretations of law. ”

“ On this principle there can be no right to disobey or evade any particular law on the ground that it interferes with any freedom of action, any right of managing his children or 'doing what he will with his own,' which but for that law the individual would possess. Any power which has been allowed to the individual up to a certain time, he is apt to regard as permanently his right. ”

“ Yet it is certain that many laws have been enforced in the past, and it is likely that some are enforced now, which are condemned by the most enlightened opinion of the time, or which at all events pass the limit of interference, as many consciences would draw it. Manifestly, therefore, nothing but confusion of thought can result from assuming that the rights of man in a moral sense are equally rights in the sense of the Constitution and the law. ”

“ Rights, properly so-called, are corollaries from the law of equal freedom, and "so far is it from its being true, as some claim, that the warrant for what are properly called rights is derived from law, it is, conversely, true that law derives its warrant from them." ”

“ That is a matter of individual taste and temperament; one loves contention more, and the other peace; from the standpoint of law both conclusions are to be equally respected; for the law leaves to every one who has a legal right, the choice of asserting his right or of surrendering it. ”

“ DEDUCTION OF AN EQUILIBRIUM OF RIGHTS.—All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. ”

“ In proceeding to the establishment of laws, you wish to adopt them from ours, and such only for the present as suit your present condition; chiefly, indeed, those for the punishment of crimes, and the protection of property. But who is to determine which of our laws suit your condition, and shall be in force with you? All of you being equally free, no one has a right to say what shall be law for the others. ”

“ A true theory of 'jus naturae,' a rationale of law or ideal of what it should be, is not to be had by inquiring how far actual law corresponds to, and is derived from, the exercise of certain original or natural rights, if that is taken to mean that we know, or can ascertain, what rights are natural on grounds distinct from those on which we determine what laws are justifiable, and that then we can proceed to ascertain what laws are justifiable by deduction from such rights. ”

“ On the other hand, the constitutions of all civilized governments, whether written or unwritten, the principles of the civil as well as those of the common law, and the teachings of wise men of ancient and of modern times, recognize as a duty the protection of individual or selfish interests. They recognize as just and necessary the restraint and punishment of wrong-doers, and the protection of the rights and interests of the individual in person and property. ”

“ Thus, my lords, the right of the publick is only that right which the publick has established by law, and confirmed by continual claims; nor is the claim of the publick from individuals to be extended beyond its known bounds, except in times of general distress, where a few must necessarily suffer for the preservation of the rest. ”

“ Every right is a consequence attached by the law to one or more facts which the law defines, and wherever the law gives any one special rights not shared by the body of the people, it does so on the ground that certain special facts, not true of the rest of the world, are true of him. ”

“ Since no law can be, in a final or true sense, established, but by right, (all unjust laws involving the ultimate necessity of their own abrogation) , the law-giving can only become a law-sustaining power in so far as it is Royal, or "right doing;"—in so far, that is, as it rules, not misrules, and orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it. ”

“ Resistance to injustice, the resistance to wrong in the domain of law, is a duty of all who have legal rights, to themselves—for it is a commandment of moral self-preservation—a duty to the commonwealth;—for this resistance must, in order that the law may assert itself, be universal. ”

“ What is government? The reverend gentleman who occupied this platform asserts that governments are divine, when all history teems with their sacrilegious proceedings. Or does he mean simply that this government is divine? If so, where is its sign-manual? The proper function of law as applied to society, is the protection of the rights of the individual. When it fails in this it is no longer binding on the conscience, according to the authority of one of the brightest lights in jurisprudence, whence this nation borrowed its common law. ”

“ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. ”

“ I readily grant that this ideal sentiment of legal right, possessed by the person by whom the wounding of the feeling of legal right is felt more sensitively than an attack upon him personally, and who disinterestedly sacrifices himself in the interest of oppressed right as if there were question only of his own rights, is the privilege of highly gifted natures. ”

“ In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility. With respect to the former, it grows out of the great rule of equality, which is grounded upon our common nature, and which Philo, with propriety and beauty, calls the mother of justice. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance of original justice. ”