Violation

“ Every such power is a right of which the violation, if intended as a violation of a right, requires a punishment, of which the kind and amount must depend on the relative importance of the right and of the extent to which its general exercise is threatened. Thus every theory of rights in detail must be followed by, or indeed implies, a corresponding theory of punishment in detail, a theory which considers what particular acts are punishable, and how they should be punished. ”

“ As a matter of principle, no doubt, if intentional violation of the right of property is treated as penal equally with the violation of the right of life, the negligent violation should be treated as penal in the one case as much as in the other. ”

“ Implicit in the order, we are told, is the word 'reasonable.' Perhaps this is true. The words of even a judicial decree must be read in their setting. But violation of the order brings the swift retribution of contempt, without the normal safeguards of a full-dress proceeding. ”

“ The other conditions of a penal law, which, though not absolutely necessary, are, to a very high degree, fit, are, that to the moral violation of the law there are many temptations, and, that of the physical observance there is great facility. ”

“ It is nevertheless true, however unpleasant the thought may be, that at any moment we may find ourselves in the centre of a whirlpool of events where individual action on our part will be necessary unless we are willing to allow some vicious and cruel violation of the law to go unpunished. ”

“ The punishment exacted by law asserts the validity of the generally applicable and carefully defined right against the violation of that right, and makes use of the public power according to a definite process as its instrument, in other words, it employs a tribunal and a judge, an instrument to which personality is attached as something accidental. Even revenge may in a similar way find a justification ”

“ The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction. ”

“ If any person shall suffer any violation of the provisions of this Act by his agent, servant, or in any room or building occupied or controlled by him, he shall be deemed a principal in such violation and punished accordingly. ”

“ But that section applies to cases where the cause of action is the doing of something made unlawful by some provision of the act, or the omission to do something required by the act, and there is a recovery 'of damages sustained in consequence of any such violation of this act,' etc. ”

“ If every individual be bound to society, society is equally bound to him, by a contract, which from its nature, equally binds both parties. This obligation, which descends from the throne to the cottage, and equally binds the highest and lowest of mankind, signifies nothing more, than that it is the interest of all, that conventions, which are useful to the greatest number, should be punctually observed. The violation of this compact by any individual, is an introduction to anarchy. ”

“ But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. ”

“ The motion, therefore, my lords, appears to me neither founded on facts, nor law, nor reason, nor any better grounds than popular caprice, and private malevolence.
If it is contrary to law to punish without proof; if it is not agreeable to reason that one should be censured for the offences of another; if it is necessary that some crime should be proved before any man can suffer as a criminal, then, my lords, I am convinced that your lordships will be unanimous in rejecting the motion. ”

“ For every statute in print there are a hundred that have no tangible existence, based on our sense of decency, of duty and of honor, which are equally controlling and which it has never been found necessary to reduce to writing, since their infraction usually brings its own penalty or infringes the more delicate domain of private conscience where the crude processes of the criminal law cannot follow. ”

“ In place of cited wrongs—which, after all, are comparatively trivial matters, as being merely offences against another or in defiance of a local usage—substitute one really overwhelming crime for which the penalty is sharp and explicit. ”

“ We err in looking for a visible and material penalty, as if God imposed a fine of mishap for the breach of his statutes. Seldom, says Horace, has penalty lost the scent of crime, yet, on second thought, he makes the sleuth-hound lame. ”

“ I will state what laws I consider ex post facto laws, within the words and the intent of the prohibition. 1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. ”

“ Accordingly, we are here confronted with a statute which, by its own words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action. ”

“ Again, of positive laws some are human, some divine; and of human positive laws, some are distributive, some penal. Distributive are those that determine the rights of the subjects, declaring to every man what it is, by which he acquireth and 272holdeth a propriety in lands, or goods, and a right or liberty of action: and these speak to all the subjects. Penal are those, which declare, what penalty shall be inflicted on those that violate the law; and speak to the ministers and officers ordained for execution. ”

“ When the deed is done he recognizes that the punishment is out of all proportion to the offence,—which is in itself the primary recognition of a penal code,—and more especially that the judgment of man is against him. ”

“ For the practical purposes of modern law we may divide torts into three groups, wrongs of a personal character, wrongs affecting property, and wrongs affecting person and property, either or both. Under the first group come the wrongs of physical violence and restraint, namely, assault and false imprisonment; then the wrong done to men's good name by libel and slander, in which kind there are sundry curious and not wholly rational distinctions ”

“ When we are considering conduct, however, in its general aspects and not exclusively in its relations to law, we appear to need a word to express any inducement, whether of a pleasureable or painful nature, which may influence a man's actions, and such a word the term 'sanction' seems conveniently to supply. Taking the word in this extended sense, the sanctions of conduct may be enumerated as the physical, the legal, the social, the religious, and the moral. ”

“ An offence, therefore, the tendency of which is to lessen the facility you might otherwise have had of deriving happiness or security from the services of persons at large, whether connected with you or not by any special tie, may be styled an offence against your reputation. It appears, therefore, that if by any offence an individual becomes a sufferer, it must be in one or other of the four points above mentioned; viz., his person, his property, his condition in life, or his reputation. These sources of distinction, then, may serve to form so many subordinate divisions. ”

“ Intent, of course, often makes the difference in the law. An act otherwise excusable or carrying minor penalties may grow to an abhorrent thing if the evil intent is present. We deal here, however, not with ordinary acts, but with speech, to which the Constitution has given a special sanction. ”

“ His character is under the protection of the court.”
“No, sir!” said the advocate, with energy; “no court, however high,—no tribunal, beneath that of Heaven itself, whose decrees we dare not question,—can throw a shield over a man like this. There are crimes which stain the nation they occur in; which, happening in our age, make men sorry for their generation, and wish they had lived in other times.” ”

“ None should be punished save in virtue of a law established and promulgated previous to the offence, and legally applied. 16. A law that should punish offences committed before its existence would be an arbitrary Act. Retroactive effect given to any law is a crime. ”

“ My instruction to you is, that language addressed to persons who immediately afterwards commit an offence, actually intended by the speaker to incite those addressed to commit it, and adapted thus to incite them, is such a counselling or advising to the crime as the law contemplates, and the person so inciting others is liable to be indicted as a principal. ”

“ One short extract will suffice:—
"The Master said, 'There are three thousand offences against which the five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than being unfilial.
"'When constraint is put upon a ruler, that is the disowning of his superiority; when the authority of the sages is disallowed, that is the disowning of all law; when filial piety is put aside, that is the disowning of the principle of affection. ”

“ If a man is overcome in duelling, if he may be afterwards accused in law? Whether, if the company pleases, they may fight in plain field, without barriers? How they should be punished that owns their crime, and is openly overcome? ”

“ Besides, according to common notions, avowed by writers upon morals on less general principles, and by lawyers too, all penal laws give a man an alternative, either to abstain from the action prohibited, or to take the penalty. ”

“ The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law's interference—the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief. ”

“ The outer circle represents wrongful acts in the aggregate; the second, wrongful acts held by law to be torts, that is to say, infractions of private rights for which redress may be sought in the civil courts, and the smallest or inner circle, acts held to be so injurious to the public as to be punishable as crimes. ”

“ Considerations of hardship often lead courts, naturally enough, to attribute to a statute the requirement of a certain mental element some consciousness of wrongdoing and knowledge of the law's command-as a matter of statutory construction. ”

“ With many, the test of justice, in penal infliction, is that it should be proportioned to the offence; while others maintain that it is just to inflict only such an amount of punishment as will deter from the commission of the offence. ”

“ Provided, That if any person shall knowingly and falsely take and subscribe any oath in this act prescribed, such person so offending and being thereof duly convicted, shall be subject to the pains, penalties, and disabilities which by law are provided for the punishment of the crime of wilful and corrupt perjury. ”

“ And it is sometimes difficult to define the distinction between that which merely affects or influences and that which regulates or furnishes a rule for conduct. There is no such difficulty in the present case. ”

“ And if we do; then our affection or respect for the law is entirely one-sided and impure. And the people who make laws and devise punishments upon those unequal premises are not at all likely to make their laws just, or their forms of punishment wise. ”

“ VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or retained, but in the case determined by the law, and under the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, forward, execute, or cause to be punished. Every citizen called on or arrested by the power of the law, ought to obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance. ”

“ The order, or judgment, seems to be in strict conformity to the offence charged in the rule to show cause, namely, for contempt of court.
We do not doubt the power of the court to punish attorneys as officers of the same, for misbehavior in the practice of the profession. ”

“ All law, says the utilitarian, implies 'sanctions'—motives equally operative upon all members of society; and, as the last resort, so far as criminal law is concerned, the sanction of physical suffering. ”

“ For such improper conduct the court may entertain summary proceedings by attachment against any of its officers, and may, in its discretion, punish them by fine or imprisonment, or discharge them from the functions of their offices, or require them to perform their professional or official duty under pain of discharge or imprisonment. ”

“ But even here, the idea of the breach of what ought to be law, still lingers in a modified shape. It would always give us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should be punished, though we do not always think it expedient that this should be done by the tribunals. ”

“ The law of master and servant in its relation to the law of negligence affords perhaps the most striking example in the last half-century of gross injustice done by this disposition to restrict responsibility and suppress litigation. ”

“ It also punishes the solicitation or incitement of others to commit crime, as a separate offence if the incitement fails, as the offence of being accessory before the fact or abettor if the offence is committed as a result of the incitement; and it punishes persons who, after a more serious crime—felony—has been committed, do any act to shield the offender from justice. ”

“ It is true, as counsel suggest, that the power which the court has of instantly punishing, without further proof or examination, contempts committed in its presence, is one that may be abused, and may sometimes be exercised hastily or arbitrarily. ”