Quotes about courts

The media has saturated the legal environment. With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, there’s no such thing as an unbiased jury anymore. No clean slate. Eighty, ninety percent of the case is decided before you get in the court room. So why not use it—control the story.

“He was acquitted; he must have been.”

“Right. Good lawyer, tainted evidence. But that doesn’t mean he was innocent.”

They had told us how important courts were for protecting our sacred rights to Privacy and Individuality, and how helpful a judge could be, but you somehow got the idea that it was a good idea to stay away from courts altogether.

Having been involved in a couple of lawsuits as an expert probability witness and having observed that a prudent skepticism is often less prized than an indefensible certainty, I turned down preliminary requests from both sides to testify.

Leland Weston: "Never take a position unless you are certain it can be defended any onslaught. That may sound like good advice to a general, but then, a courtroom is nothing more then a very civilized war."

Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant.

“Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell prosecute and convict the same way,” Moss said. “That’s not how it works. Even in military court, the defendant’s entitled to a fair shake.”

It went on, “If you accuse, then you must judge.”

“You let your accusers be your judges?” asked Peter, astounded.

“Who else should be satisfied?” it asked. “If one’s accusers cannot be satisfied, what is justice?”

“One’s accusers might be mad,” Peter suggested, very unwisely I thought, considering where we were. “Mad, and incapable of being satisfied.”

Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.

The Courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement; the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.

The President ... may err ... Congress may decide amiss ... But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.