Legal System Quotes

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I believe [...] that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“When people can get away with crimes just because they are wealthy or have the right connections, the scales are tipped against fairness and equality. The weight of corruption then becomes so heavy that it creates a dent that forces the world to become slanted, so much so — that justice just slips off.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“When the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.”
― Tiffany Madison

“Spring had come finally and after much hesitation, to Lincoln's Inn Fields and there were daffodils out upon the green grass and gilly-flowers blooming in the window-boxes of the ground floor sets. This being Lincoln's Inn, where an air of general severity prevails, they did so with an unconscionable meekness, as if they feared that some legal eminence- Mr Crabbe perhaps- would descend in wrath from his chambers and present them with a writ for unlicensed blossoming or occupying too great a proportion of space.”
― D.J. Taylor, Kept

“Only the guilty survive nowadays and present themselves as innocents in the media. And they make you consider the innocents as guilty. Fascistic! The only way to fix this is to consider the guilty as innocents and the innocents as guilty.”
― Maria Karvouni, You Are Always Innocent

“I love it when a justice system becomes the justice system.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Don’t commend yourselves, dispensers of justice, that the rack
Is superseded, and collars of iron no longer fetter our necks.
Not one person, not one heart, has been elated that in our day
An intentional spasm of clemency contorts you into appearing more delicate.

The scaffold repays what it has received
Over time, like children their toys from old birthdays.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“The legal system protects property rights, allowing entrepreneurs to innovate and take risks.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.

“The Indian legal system is a microcosm of a wider patriarchal structure.”
― Shalu Nigam

“Love is the master-key to social troubles, law is but an inferior and cheaper stand-in.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“There are more things in the vastness of time and space than dreamt up in your paleolithic construct of law.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“I'm Above The Law (The Sonnet)

Yes, I am above the law,
So is every single world builder.
It's only the apes without brain who,
Are tamed by the medieval lawmaker.
If you are to be a civilized being,
It is your duty to rise above the law.
If you can't tell right from wrong,
It is common sense you lack, not law.
It is nothing but a juvenile democracy,
That is founded on spineless law-abidance.
Civilized democracy instills accountability,
What it doesn't demand is boneheaded obedience.
You have a heart, brain and spine, why not use them!
Stand up o citizen justice, and keep the law as servant.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Strong rights protection is far from harmless. The proliferation of strong rights can frustrate the democratic will and erode the solidarity of communities. Judicial dominion over constitutional rights can absolve the rest of us of our responsibility to take rights seriously, leading our moral institutions to atrophy and eventually to decay. Rights can breed resentment of those who win the Constitutions favor at the expense of others”
― Jamal Greene, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart

“Contrary to what you may think, the legal system was neither founded upon nor designed to reflect the common decency found in normal human relationships. It primarily works like the rules for a lunatic asylum. It tries to govern people driven insane by the inflated idea of their own worth.”
― David Rhodes, Driftless

“Law is like a band-aid. Band-aids don't heal the wound, they only prevent further infection while your natural immune system does the healing. Likewise, law doesn't cure crime, it only keeps crime in check, while individual accountability treats the inhumanity that causes crime. And at some point the band-aid must come off, because, just like a body covered in band-aid is the sign of a sick person, a society covered in law is the sign of a sick species.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“They detect 'criminals' by reading thoughts, substances and movements. Mafias create fake situations accessing the mind just before sleep and the body through shooting the feet with secret weapons. A paid actor wrongly accuses.”
― Maria Karvouni, You Are Always Innocent

“They have secret weapons that break the heart of innocents, elevate stress levels, shoot down to make it look guilt. They can burn from the inside this way and make it seem natural death. Judges use them to force their wrong opinion”
― Maria Karvouni, You Are Always Innocent

“Simplicity is the method by which you seek and communicate knowledge, sharpening your focus as you work through the case...”
― Francis P. Karam, The Truth Engine: Cross-Examination Outside the Box

“Winning or losing the case is the prime motive for any litigant as a party in the adversarial system because the system is built to see the issue of the complainant as a dispute rather than as an issue of social or legal wrong or as a matter of injustice. The decision pronounced by the court therefore favours one party and is often against another, when two parties are involved in a legal disagreement. Rather than viewing
the legal wrong as a matter of injustice, the courtrooms reduce the concerns of the litigants as technical matters. The courtrooms as the implementers of the laws act as valiant guardians of law and not as a protector of the rights of the victims. The entire system is built around laws and legal processes. A victim has been granted little roles or rights in the entire process.”
― Shalu Nigam

“Though courtrooms are created for the purpose of delivering justice to litigants, the litigant is seen as one who is at the receiving end of the entire system. The judges and the lawyers occupy the central position within the courtroom rather than acting as the service providers. Their subjectivities influence the process. The process, approach, and environment of the courtrooms are not litigant-friendly. The daily nitty gritty, bureaucratic procedures and technicalities observed in the courtrooms further create trouble for litigants who may lack legal knowledge or awareness and may hamper the smooth process of law. The black
and white rules of law, are clouted with the shades of the subjectivities exhibited by different actors, and the outcome or the decisions of the courts are determined by various factors apart from the legal rules.”
― Shalu Nigam

“To fight the patriarchal environment that prevails in the Indian courtrooms, there are
women who are making their mark and are utilizing the law and the legal system to make a dent in patriarchy. These courageous women are standing up against the powerful institutionalized structural imbalance and asserting their rights while showing that the Constitution, the law, and the courtrooms do not belong to a handful of judges and lawyers but belong to the people, the litigants, the poor, the marginalized, the women – to the people of the country. The system may be
powerful or corrupt but people are more powerful than the system and have the power to smash the loopholes within it.”
― Shalu Nigam

“he law is a blunt tool and though it makes tall claims of being
objective and neutral, in itself, the law is fragile and will not smash patriarchy. Rather, The courts have always favored the power structure and shielded those who are resourceful. The courtrooms, themselves as a symbol of authority, defend the values of supremacy and protect the oppressive
and regressive system. However, those on the margins with their conviction and belief in the values of democracy, justice, and the rule of law, need to shake the system. With individual or through collective action the marginalized are challenging the power structure and are compelling the state and the society to make social and political transformation at a larger level. Angela Davis said that “in a racist society it is not enough to be a non-racist. We must be anti-racist”. Similarly, here it may be derived that `in a patriarchal society, it is not enough to be a non-patriarchal. We must be anti-patriarchy’. The women with their sheer will and conviction are marching ahead to smash
patriarchy using law as an instrument of change. However, what is required is the radical interpretation of constitutional values by the courts and this should be strengthened by assuring the equal representation of women within the judiciary at all levels to open up the possibility of nondiscrimination within the patriarchal hostile settings.”
― Shalu Nigam

“When there is no process, people lose hope that their voices will be heard. And then they take action, even if there's no legal route to do so. But this action might not be the one they really want to take. Perhaps they want to have a community-wide conversation about a monument or make some changes to it. Understanding and reconciliation can happen in many ways - but when authorities refuse to listen to calls for removal, some people will think they have no choice but to topple a monument.”
― Erin L. Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments

“Future society thrives on compassionate AI, which shapes a legal system free of corruption and inequality, delivering justice without fear, bias, or delay but with the utmost care and respect for humanity.”
― Amit Ray, Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence AI 5.0

“A legal system that supports it's people when they are in the wrong is problematic.”
― Mitta Xinindlu