Witty remarks and cutting criticisms about judges, lawyering and the pursuit of justice…
Good laws have their origins in bad morals. –Ambrosius Macrobius.
A lawyer is a gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it for himself. –Lord Brougham.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. –Anatole France.
Law: the only game where the best players get to sit on the bench. –Anon.
Justice is open to everyone in the same way as the Ritz Hotel. –Judge Sturgess.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished. – Jeremy Bentham.
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it. –Henry Ward Beecher.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. –Henry VI, Part 2, William Shakespeare.
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. –Charles Lamb.
Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger. –Horace.
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. –Cicero.
About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop. –Elihu Root.
I used to say that, as Solicitor General, I made three arguments of every case. First came the one that I planned–as I thought, logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented–interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night. –Robert H. Jackson.
Judicial reform is no sport for the short-winded. –Arthur T. Vanderbuilt.
The study of law is sublime, and its practice vulgar. – Oscar Wilde.
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