Quotes for All
Not only the financial power, but also the legal power, has remained seated in Britain. The Washington Post commented on June 18, 1983 that after the American Revolution, all the old laws remained in effect in the new United States: Some of these laws of English common law dated back to 1278, long before America … Read more
The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King’s courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law. Edward … Read more
The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law; and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took place chiefly between 1150 and 1250, must be shared between the officials of the royal Chancery, who framed new forms, and the royal judges, who either allowed them or quashed them. Edward Jenks
It was natural that the direct wielders of the royal prerogative, men who sat in the Star Chamber and the Privy Council, who knew the secrets of the State and the necessity for prompt action, should despise the merely declaratory character of a good deal of Common Law process. To them we doubtless owe those … Read more
Reason is the life of the law. Edward Coke
Common law is common right. Edward Coke
Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reasonThe law, which is perfection of reason. Edward Coke
There is no jewel in the world comparable to learning; no learning so excellent both for Prince and subject, as knowledge of laws; and no knowledge of any laws so necessary for all estates and for all causes, concerning goods, lands or life, as the common laws of England. Edward Coke
Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found \”against the evidence,\” … the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: … Read more
Consider: what could be more American than the principle that every person is to be held accountable for his or her crimes only? Could anything be more un-American than the Second Commandment’s warning that \”I Yahweh, thy God, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and … Read more