Quotes
A lawyer must be told things frankly; then it's up to us to muddle them up.
p. 35
Every person born into this world has a natural right to sustain, preserve, and defend his own life to the best of his ability.
A just king must be the first to observe those laws that he has himself prescribed.
They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.
Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or change it.
p. 113
Our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing variety of facts. Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
p. 113
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
Judges must beware of hard constructions, and strained inferences; for there is no worse torture, than the torture of laws.
Law is order, and good law is good order.
The law is reason unaffected by desire.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
Roman laws tended to be long and complex — one of Rome's most enduring legacies to the world is cumbersome and tortuous legal prose.
