“If torture was so strongly embedded in legal practice, it was because it revealed truth and showed the operation of power. It assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the criminal.”

— Michel Foucault , book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, pp.55

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Michel Foucault 128

French philosopher 1926–1984

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)
Context: If adequate incentives could be assured, public ownership and scientific operation of banking, sources of electric energy, basic natural resources, chief means of transportation and communication, and steel, would increase productivity enormously by national planning and correlating.

“I know of no duty of the Court which it is more important to observe, and no powers of the Court which it is more important to enforce, than its power of keeping public bodies within their rights. The moment public bodies exceed their rights] they do so to the injury and oppression of private individuals, and those persons are entitled to be protected from injury arising from such operations of public bodies.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Roberts v. Gwyrfai District Council (1899), L. R. 2 C. D. 614.

“Those who reveal information the law makes it a crime to reveal, when doing so is the only way to demonstrate to the public that powerful officials are acting wrongfully or deceitfully.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

" The Leakers Who Exposed Gen. Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/the-leakers-who-exposed-gen-flynns-lie-committed-serious-and-wholly-justified-felonies/," The Intecept, 14 February 2017.

“What is missing from the Constitution’s framework as the Framers envisioned it is the President’s purported power to kneecap House investigations of Executive branch operations by demanding that his senior-level aides breach their legal duty to respond to compelled congressional process.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970) United States District Judge

Committee on the Judiary, United States House of Representatives, Plaintiff, v. Donald F. McGahn II, Defendant. (Nov 25, 2019)

“The spirit ot lawlessness grows with what it feeds on and when mobs with impunity lynch criminals for one crime, they are certain to begin to lynch real or alleged criminals for other causes. In the recent cases of lynching over three-fourths were not for rape at all, but for murder, attempted murder and even less heinous offenses. Moreover, the history of these recent cases shows the awful fact that when the minds of men are habituated to the use of torture by lawless bodies to avenge crimes of a peculiarly revolting description, other lawless bodies will use torture in order to punish crimes of an ordinary type.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

“We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Kissinger to Nixon, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
Source: FRUS: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972, vol. E-7 (online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve07), White House tapes, Oval Office 637-3, 12 December 1971, 8:45–9:42 a.m. Hereafter cited as FRUS, vol. E-7. quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.

“It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"What 'Torture' Is" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/what_torture_is.html, The Daily Dish (18 May 2007)

“Secrets have power over us. Only when secrets are revealed can truth be known and freedom brought about.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 107

“The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 162.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

“The operation was a success, but the patient died.' What such a procedure is to medicine, the Court's opinion in this case is to law.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (Scalia, concurring).
1990s

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