“The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done.”

— Lawrence Lessig , book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

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

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Lawrence Lessig 71

American academic, political activist. 1961

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

“I may say without exaggeration that this is a revolutionary approach; it is very painful, because this system of permission was the underpinning of the great bureaucratic system on all levels. And that democratic system, a corrupt one, it has been built for years and decades.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: [2011-06-21, В Страсбурге Янукович перепутал демократию с бюрократией, https://focus.ua/politics/190373, 2022-06-12, ФОКУС, ru]

“I do not remember any other term when the force that had captured the political power in this country had become so vulgar as it is today, so corrupt, and so hypocritical; when the legal system had been so downtrodden, deteriorated, collapsed and turned into a means of cruelty.”

Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer

"Two Heart Pain" ["İki Kalp Ağrısı"], in Republic [Cumhuriyet] (16 June 2012)

“Justice, under capitalism, works not from a notion of obedience to moral law, or to conscience, or to compassion, but from the assumption of a duty to preserve a social order and the legal “rights” that constitute that order, especially the just which preserves the system of justice even if the system is itself routinely unjust.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

“I have had my difficulties with the American legal system, and so I feel qualified to talk about it.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 175.

“Some of the same people who were instrumental in the Federalist Society’s effort to change our legal system are now working to help corporations increase their control over the flow of information.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

Speech to the Eighth Annual American Constitution Society National Convention (17 June 2010) http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=news&id=865
Context: Some of the same people who were instrumental in the Federalist Society’s effort to change our legal system are now working to help corporations increase their control over the flow of information.
If you control the flow of information, you can control the conversation around important issues. If you can control the conversation, you can change this country. … But we can’t be satisfied with stopping conservatives and their corporate clients from controlling the narrative when it comes to our legal system.
We have to fight back with our own.
In our narrative, the legal system doesn’t exist to help the powerful grow more powerful – it exists to guarantee that every American is entitled to justice
In our narrative, we defend our individual rights and liberties against corporate encroachment just as fiercely as we defend them against government overreach.

“I think the American legal system sucks worse than a Celine Dion cover version of "Whole Lotta Love."”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

"Lawyers".
Ranting Again

“In fact, the legal system is in part responsible for their very size and growth. And too often when the individual finds himself in conflict with these forces, the legal system sides with the giant institution, not the small businessman or private citizen.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

On big business and big government; speech before American Bar Association, New York (August 8, 1978), reported in Alan F. Pater, Jason R. Pate, What They Said in 1978 (1979), p. 168.

“In Proposals which I drew up for the formation of a Scottish Legal History Society [now the Stair Society] I said that it had long been a reproach to Scotland that no adequate history of Scots Law existed, though it would be difficult to imagine a more attractive field of study, for the legal system in Scotland was not only perhaps our most distinctive heritage, but was also of special interest because of its combination in theory and practice of the Roman Law and the Common Law.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 214

“Do things that make you happy within the confines of the legal system.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

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