Law and Courts

Dear Mr B. R. Mehta,

     I read a piece titled "Law. Immorality" by your friend Mr S. N. Chhabra in one of the blogs of LIC pensioners.

     Lacking Mr Chhabra's Email Id, I am sending the trailing quotations by some famous personalities on Law and Courts to you.

     Thanks and regards.

     Have a nice day!

P. Ramanathan

          Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., one of the great justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, was listening to a young lawyer who mentioned at several points in his argument that his client sought justice before the court. Justice Holmes listened as long as he could and then said not unkindly, "Young man, let me remind you that this is a court of law and not a court of justice."

   

     "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable[...]There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."~ Justice Janice Brown California Supreme Court, quoted in

Gathering mob: Part II By Thomas Sowell

     "The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it." ~ BERTOLT BRECHT, The Threepenny Opera     

     "Make crime pay. Become a lawyer." ~ Will Rogers

     "Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." ~ JEREMY BENTHAM, The Canadian Bar Journal, Jun. 1966     

     "It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law." ~ Thomas Hobbes

     "Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law." ~ OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Traveller

     "Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through." ~ JONATHAN SWIFT, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind                     

     

     "Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers -- and most others in the profession -- will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it. ~ ALAN DERSHOWITZ, Letters to a Young Lawyer                                                                                                

     "Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." ~ EDMUND BURKE, speech at Bristol previous to the election of 1780

     "Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville." ~ CHARLES BUKOWSKI, Notes of a Dirty Old Man                                                                                                 

      

     "It is wrong to consider that courts are established for the benefit of the people. Those who want to perpetuate their power do so through the courts. If people were to settle their own quarrels, a third party would not be able to exercise any authority over them. Truly, men were less unmanly when they settled their disputes either by fighting or by asking their relatives to decide for them. They became more unmanly and cowardly when they resorted to the courts of law. It was certainly a sign of savagery when they settled their disputes by fighting. Is it any less so, if I ask a third party to decide between you and me? Surely, the decision of a third party is not always right. The parties alone know who is right. We, in our simplicity and ignorance, imagine that a stranger, by taking our money, gives us justice.

---- MAHATMA GANDHI, Hind Swaraj