Scales of justice

“ Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them. ”

“ But perhaps if there was less law there might be more justice than in some other courts; for if the civil law be a law of universal reason, judging of the rectitude, or obliquity of men’s actions, every man of common sense is endued with a portion of it, at least sufficient to make him distinguish right from wrong, or what the civilians call malum in se. ”

“ How striking and instructive to observe the abstract rules of justice brought to bear, with equal readiness and precision, upon ordinary and extraordinary combinations of circumstances!—to witness the dead letter of the law become animated with potent vitality for the regulation of human affairs! ”

“ The assumption of penal power on the part of the public judiciary, in conjunction with the possession of unlimited control over the person and life of the malefactor, led to the adoption of a principle which long continued to dominate penal justice. ”

“ The field for justice has widened as the state widened; it has reached out to all classes; its high exercise distinguishes the foremost nations of our times. Yet even in the teeth of the law-courts injustice is still common; in everyday life it is most patent. ”

“ And such a system of administering justice, would be no more false, absurd, or atrocious, than that system of working by majorities, which seeks to accomplish, by legislation, the same ends which, in the case supposed, would be accomplished by judicial decisions. ”

“ No matter how confused a question may seem to us, there must absolutely, when we come to think of it, be some one great elemental principle upon which it not only can, but must, be decided — some boundary line between justice and injustice which we may be too blind to see, but which exists, and calls for observance, none the less. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A kind of moral gun-cotton, they drive through the most stupendous difficulties, and rend rocks that appeared to be insuperable barriers in the eyes of common sense or common justice. Judges are compelled to yield to their authority, and do violence to their own consciences whilst they help to lay the healing unction to those of their lawgivers. ”

“ The obligation should, nevertheless, be pointed out.
3. Impartiality and integrity concern above all civil justice. The duty which more especially concerns criminal justice, is equity; namely, a moderate justice, intermediary between a dangerous lenity and an excessive severity. In truth, in most cases, at least in the graver cases, the judge has scarcely anything more to do than to apply the law. It is for the jury, a sort of free and irresponsible magistracy, to decide upon the culpability or innocence of the prisoners. It is for the jury to find a just medium between harshness and lenity. ”

“ The greater part of these common maxims have come into use from the practice of courts of justice, which have been naturally led to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was likely to suggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable them to fulfil their double function, of inflicting punishment when due, and of awarding to each person his right. ”

“ These are arguments addressed to your reasons and your consciences; not to be shaken in upright minds by any precedent—for no precedents can sanctify injustice; if they could, every human right would long ago have been extinct upon the earth. If the state trials in bad times are to be searched for precedents, what murders may you not commit—what [p. 399] law of humanity may you not trample upon—what rule of justice may you not violate—and what maxim of wise policy may you not abrogate and confound? ”

“ There still exists, however, in the minds of many the belief that above and behind all the turmoil and strife of politics, all the flux and reflux of social movements and public sentiment, the confusion of enactments, amendments, and repeals of statutes, the swaying of judicial opinion, there is some law of nature or in nature, some criterion, which if ascertained and obeyed would be perfect justice. ”

“ A general law which bears the name of Justice has been made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that people, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people are consequently confined within the limits of what is just. A nation may be considered in the light of a jury which is empowered to represent society at large, and to apply the great general law of justice. ”

“ But these communities of ours have it in their power to furnish to the world a far more illustrious example of human prescience, and benevolent care, by their prompt, exact, and well-considered administration of justice—including the cases both in the civil and the criminal courts. ”

“ And, under its influence, how much of the clear atmosphere of humanity will stimulate our courts of justice, which are still too much isolated from the world and from human life, where, nevertheless, prisoners and witnesses come, and too often come again, living phantoms whom the judges know not, and only see confusedly through the thick mist of legal maxims, and articles of the code, and criminal procedure. ”

“ I would help my fellow-men to justice; but must I spend my life, and dry up and impoverish my very soul, in regulating his disputes according to rules that are something very different from justice?—often mere logical deductions from certain legal abstractions, in which all moral right and wrong,—all substantial justice between man and man, is utterly forgotten? ”

“ It seems inconsistent with the most rudimentary principles of our system of criminal justice, a system carefully developed and preserved throughout the centuries to prevent oppressive enforcement of oppressive laws, to concentrate this much power in the hands of any officer of the state. ”

“ The laws must be constantly changing to accommodate the forces and counterforces in our dynamic society and the total law at any time is an expression of the structure of society. There simply must be a close correlation between law and justice. ”

“ When I realize the inadequacies of our legal system to do justice alike to all men and women, the poor as well as the rich, the innocent and confiding as well as the crafty and cunning, I feel nothing but discontent and long for the time to come when justice and mercy shall be of higher value in the courts of our land than precedent and legal procedure. ”

“ Under our form of government the machinery of criminal justice depends for its force and efficiency upon the enlightened moral sense of the individuals to whom the public by their constitution and laws have temporarily entrusted its operation. ”

“ This avowed political or social bias has, I infer, bred among the American people the conviction that justice is not administered indifferently to all men, wherefore the bench is not respected with us as, for instance, it is in Great Britain, where law and politics are sundered. ”

“ But the testimony is partially and unjustly quoted. Another estimate of the same evidence would argue as strongly, and even more so, for the inherent goodness of man. If we take the instance of human laws it will at once illustrate and confirm my assertion. If laws prove the existence and universality of crime, they prove also the existence and universality of the sense of justice, for laws, so far as they embody general principles, are the expression of common and collective sentiments. ”

“ The Criminal Rules were framed with the declared purpose of ensuring that justice not be thwarted by those with too little imagination to see that procedural rules are not ends in themselves, but simply means to an end: the achievement of equal justice for all. ”

“ Compared with it, the complicated systems of law that are compounded of the law of nature, of constitutional grants, of innumerable and incessantly changing legislative enactments, and of countless and contradictory judicial decisions, with no uniform principle of reason or justice running through them, are among the blindest of all the mazes in which unsophisticated minds were ever bewildered and lost. ”

“ Within the community the law insists that all force shall be judicial if possible. This protection against extrajudicial force—this freedom from all constraint save that which operates through the courts of law and justice—is one of the chief privileges of the members of the body politic. ”

“ The outlook and feeling thus reflected are not merely relevant to our problem. They are important. The claims of dominant opinion rooted in sentiments of justice and public morality are among the most powerful shaping-forces in lawmaking by courts. ”

“ But as it requires a painful degree of patience to examine into facts, and no inconsiderable share of skill and equity to affix the extent of punishments; in order to prevent quarrels from arising through the presuming conceit, which every man entertains of his own wisdom, and to which others are averse to yield; in all well regulated communities, it has been usual to select for the tribunals of justice those, who were deemed worthy of such honour, or likely to become so, from their integrity and wisdom. ”

“ Where rights are infringed, where fundamental principles are overthrown, where the general system of the laws is departed from, the legislative intention must be pressed with irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such object. ”

“ As we find little complaint of the administration of justice in all the records of disputes, reproaches, and recriminations which mark the records of those old manors, we must assume that the processes of law were carried on in harmony with the spirit of fairness prevailing in the home country. ”

“ With the common people, with whom these institutions have mainly to deal, justice should be dispensed with regard to appearances; there should be the formality of the superior courts, and somewhat of their show. ”

“ Hence we see on all sides, side by side with dogma in the classical sciences of law, economy, and politics, empiricism in the laws themselves. And that is why the practical defects and constant impotence of repression in penal justice are the most eloquent arguments of the experimental school, which extends and strengthens its own theoretical inductions by the practical reforms which it suggests. ”

“ As to the difference between that material civilization now prevailing,...” As to the difference between that material civilization now prevailing, and the divine civilization which will be one of the benefits to derive from the House of Justice, it is this: material civilization, through the power of punitive and retaliatory laws, restraineth the people from criminal acts; and notwithstanding this, while laws to retaliate against and punish a man are continually proliferating, as ye can see, no laws exist to reward him. ”

“ As to the Administration of Justice.-Is justice being administered impartially, without fear or favor? Do we maintain a free, honest and independent judiciary? Do we enable our poorest citizen to resort to the courts for the enforcement of his rights or the redress of his grievances? ”

“ It is then that citizens, unable longer to bear the outrages committed by desperate criminals, take the law into their own hands and administer justice according to their own ideas of right, and without the forms of law. ”

“ The method of administering justice followed by the Revolutionary Tribunals is primitive. The judges are guided by no rules, instructions, or laws, but solely by what is known as “revolutionary conscience.” ”

“ If the application of a law would work injustice, no judge can in conscience pronounce sentence according to that law; but there are many cases recognized in jurisprudence in which courts of equity afford relief to rights that cannot be defended or protected in courts of law, and in cases of this kind the judge should be guided by recognized principles of natural justice and the rules of his court. ”

“ It is vitally important not only that judicial decisions should be correct, distinguishing accurately between right and wrong, and appointing fitting remedies for injustice, but also that the subjects of the state should be able to know beforehand the decision to which on any matter the courts of justice will come. This prevision is impossible unless the course of justice is uniform, and the only effectual method of procuring uniformity is the observance of those fixed principles which constitute the law. ”

“ Mankind reaches out after the absolute right, makes its constitutions to establish justice, and provide for the common defence. We report the decisions of wise men, and of courts ; we keep the record of cases decided, to. help us judge more wisely in time to come. The nation would enact laws : it aims to get the justest men in the State, that they may incorporate their aggregate sense of right into a statute. We set twelve honest men to try an alleged offender; they are to apply their joint justice to the special case. The people wish law to be embodied justice, administered without-passion. ”

“ In my first work, Social Statics, published twenty-three years ago, the essential thesis is that, apart from their warrant as alleged Divine injunctions, and apart from their authority as moral intuitions, the principles of justice are primarily deducible from the laws of life as carried on under social conditions. ”

“ This does well enough for the purpose of illustrating the relative proportion of crimes to torts or wrongful acts in general, and, if a tiny dot be placed in the centre of the bull's-eye to represent those crimes which are actually punished, one gets an excellent idea of how infinitely small a number of these serve to keep the whole social fabric in order and sustain the majesty of the law. ”