“For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

— Lysander Spooner

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 5

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English o…" by Lysander Spooner?

Lysander Spooner30

Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist 1808–1887

Related quotes

“It is the professional duty of the judge to validate the law’s claim to validity, to sacrifice his own sense of the right to the authoritative command of the law, to ask only what is legal and ask not if it is also just.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

Rechtsphilosophie (1932)

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

“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 (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

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

“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 (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

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

“When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the”

Ann Coulter book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

Source: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

“[T]he constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.... It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.... So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is the very essence of judicial duty.... Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions... It would be giving the legislature a practical and real omnipotence... The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

5. U.S. (1 Cranch) 137
Marbury v. Madison (1803)

“Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

Ten Sermons of Religion (1853), III : Of Justice and the Conscience https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Sermons_of_Religion/Of_Justice_and_the_Conscience <br class="br">Context: Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation towards the eternal right.

“The highest of human laws is the law that is established by appeal to arms. The sword has decided in favor of the North, and what they claimed as principles cease to be principles, and are become law. The views that we hold cease to be principles because they are opposed to law. It is our duty to abandon ideas that are obsolete and conform to the requirements of law.”

James Longstreet (1821–1904) Confederate Army general

Letter to the New Orleans Times http://civilwartalk.com/threads/im-a-good-ole-rebel.34939/page-2#post-352510 (8 June 1867)

“It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision … You have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

Georgia vs. Brailsford http://www.friesian.com/jury.htm (1794) <br class="br">1790s

“In a criminal proceeding the question is not alone whether substantial justice has been done, but whether justice has been done according to law. All proceedings in poenam are, it need scarcely be observed, strictissimi juris; nor should it be forgotten that the formalities of law, though here and there they may lead to the escape of an offender, are intended on the whole to insure the safe administration of justice and the protection of innocence, and must be observed. A party accused has the right to insist on them as matter of right, of which he cannot be deprived against his will; and the Judge must see that they are followed.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Martin v. Mackonochie (1878), L. R. 3 Q. B. 775.

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Lysander Spooner30

Related quotes

Related topics