Go not in and out in the court of justice, that thy name may not stink.
Law Quotes
A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days… Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, […]
The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view today. A promise may be lacking and yet the whole writing may be “instinct with an obligation,” imperfectly expressed… If that is so, there is a contract.
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now. Being a grant of powers to a government, its language is general, and as changes come in social and political life it embraces in its grasp all new conditions which are within the […]
Our constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and the first inaugural address of Washington… down to the present day, has, with a few aberrations . . ., ruled out of order government-sponsored endorsement of religion – even when no legal coercion is present, and indeed even when no ersatz, “peer-pressure” psycho-coercion is present – […]
The explanation lies in the lesson of history that was and is the inspiration for the Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the hands of government what might begin as a tolerant expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce. A state-created orthodoxy puts at grave risk that freedom of […]
The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. U. S. Supreme Court, Wallace v.
So I ask you to join me in working long hours – nights and weekends, if necessary – to pass this bill. And I don’t make that request lightly. For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country I recognize that outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, […]
No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or nonattendance.
The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.
