John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge: In-Laws

“I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 136.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Books , Law , Understanding , Reading

“As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Reg v. Solomons (1890), 17 Cox, C. C. 93.

Law

“It is no longer true in the sense in which it was true when these dicta were uttered, that " Christianity is part of the law of the land." Nonconformists and Jews were then under penal laws, and were hardly allowed civil rights. But now, so far as I know the law, a Jew might be Lord Chancellor. Certainly he might be Master of the Rolls, and the great Judge whose loss we have all had to deplore2 might have had to try such a case, and if the view of the law supposed be correct, he would have had to tell the jury, perhaps partly composed of Jews, that it was blasphemy to deny that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, which he himself did deny, and which Parliament has allowed him to deny, and which it was part of " the law of the land " that he might, deny.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Reg. v. Ramsay and Foote (1883), 15 Cox, C. C. 235.

Law , Sense , Loss , Christ

“We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Reg. v. Ramsey (1886), 1 Cab. & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 148.

Law

“A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Body v. Halse (1891) L. R. 1 Q. B. [1892], p. 207.

Law

“We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 136.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law , Thinking

“As a lawyer I am before and above all things for the supremacy of law.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

The Queen v. Bishop of London (1889), L. R. 23 Q. B. 452.

Law

“It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law

“It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Reg. v. Gibson (1887), 18 Q. B. D. 537; 16 Cox, C. C. 181.

Law

“Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 135.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law , Change , Time , Personality

“I am sure from my experience of juries that, in a criminal case especially, they will obey the law as declared by the Judge; they will take the law from the Judge, whether they like it or do not like it, and apply it honestly to the facts before them.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 133.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law

“The moment juries or judges go beyond their functions, and take upon themselves to lay down the law or find the facts, not according to the law as it is, but according to the law as they think it ought to be, then the certainty of the law is at an end; there is nothing to rely upon; we are left to the infinite variety and uncertainty of human opinion; to caprice which may at any moment influence the best of us, to feelings and prejudices, perhaps excellent in themselves, but which may distort or disturb our judgment, and distract our minds from the single simple operation of ascertaining whether the facts proved bring the case within the law as we are bound to take it.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law , Feeling , Thinking

“I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

In re Brandreth (1891), L. J. 60 Q. B. D. 504.

Law , Thinking

“I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge

Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

Death , God , People , Age