Legal Ethics Quotes

I have been committed to carrying out my duties ... in accordance with both the letter and spirit of all applicable rules of ethics and canons of conduct. ~ Samuel Alito

Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ." ... and ... "The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers. ~ Thane Rosenbaum

They don't produce anything. All they do is guide you through the labyrinth of the legal system that they created - and they keep changing it just in case you start to catch on. ~ Ian Shoales

There is also the ceaseless outpouring of books on toilet training, separating one sibling's fist from another sibling's eye socket, expressing breast milk while reading a legal brief, helping preschoolers to "own" their feelings, getting Joshua to do his homework, and raising teenage boys so they become Sensitive New Age Guys instead of rooftop snipers or Chippendale dancers. Over eight hundred books on motherhood were published between 1970 and 2000; only twenty-seven of these came out between 1970 and 1980, so the real avalanch happened in the past twenty years. We've learned about the perils of "the hurried child" and "hyperparenting," in which we schedule our kids with so many enriching activities that they make the secretary of state look like a couch spud. But the unhurried child probably plays too much Nintendo and is out in the garage building pipe bombs, so you can't underschedule them either. Then there's the Martha Stewartization of America, in which we are meant to sculpt the carrots we put in our kids' lunches into the shape of peonies and build funhouses for them in the backyard; this has raised the bar to even more ridiculous levels than during the June Cleaver era. ~ Susan J. Douglas

I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate. ~ Oscar Wilde

The State has a legal monopoly on the right to use aggression against others in the form of taxation and compulsory edicts (legislation). Not only must "customers" pay into its operation without regard to their consent, but they must surrender to the rules its internal processes determine at all times. Additionally, the State has a monopoly on the provision of security, and has anointed itself as the ultimate arbiter in all conflicts, including those conflicts which involve its own agents. It ~ Christopher Chase Rachels

The most popular form of atheism is a philosophy called naturalism. Naturalism is the view that science and science alone determines what exists. What exists is what our best scientific theories of the world require. If something is not required by our best scientific theories of the world, then it does not exist. But this is devastating for ethics because moral values are not required by science. Science is morally neutral. You cannot find moral values in a test tube. So it follows immediately, from the perspective of naturalism, that moral values do not really exist. They are just subjective illusions of human beings. ~ William Lane Craig

I love immigrants. Legal, illegal - they're not to be despised. ~ Mario Cuomo

Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place. ~ Terry Pratchett

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice ~ Thomas Jefferson

It would be a mistake ... to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages ... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see ... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew. ~ Woodrow Wilson

What is worse than doing evil, is being evil" (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics, p.67). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security. ~ John Garamendi

I think Guantanamo, has been synonymous with the staining of American values and American legal tradition. ~ Mark Shields

Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection. ~ Paulo Freire

The state operates in a legal vacuum. There exists no contract between the state and its citizens. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. ~ Charles Lamb

You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But not much progress can be made in that direction while we've still got a majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide. ~ Doug Graham

The Florida Supreme Court wanted all the legal votes to be counted. The United States Supreme Court, on the other hand, did not want all the votes to be counted. ~ Vincent Bugliosi

The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history. ~ Malcolm X

I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research are examples of knowledge fascism. ~ Vandana Shiva

Some men don't gel when it comes to work - you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of views, different methods of filmmaking - and we didn't gel. ~ Antoine Fuqua

Dagny, there's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. When you grow up, you'll know what I mean. ~ Ayn Rand

I would expect illegal alien parents to take care of their children. If it means the kids go back home with them, that's what happens. If it means there are legal relatives in the United States that can take care of them, that can happen to. But I believe it's the parents responsibility to take care of the kids. ~ Mo Brooks

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

Almost any established decision procedure is better than a resort to force; for when force is used, people get hurt and the desire for retaliation is likely to lead to more violence. Moreover, most decision procedures produce results at least as beneficial and just as a resort to force. ~ Peter Singer

When banks place credits into your account, they are merely pretending to lend you money. In reality, they have nothing to lend. Even the money that non-indebted depositors have placed with them was originally created out of nothing in response to someone else's loan. So what entitles the banks to collect rent on nothing? It is immaterial that men everywhere are forced by law to accept these nothing certificates in exchange for real goods and services. We are talking here not about what is legal, but what is moral. ~ G. Edward Griffin

Do not ghettoize society by putting people into legal categories of gender, race, ethnicity, language, or other such characteristics. ~ Preston Manning

Simon leveled the gun at Will again. 'Now,' he said casually, 'someone's gonna die here in the next minute.'
On the other side of the two-way mirror, Sammy took aim.
'That's exactly right,' she whispered. ~ Jenna Brooks

Economics and ethics are not mutually exclusive. ~ Lionel Tiger

Finn had seen in the people he'd once contended with, and sometimes even among his own colleagues - a policy in which killing was the first option rather than the last, because lives counted for nothing against the security of guaranteed silence. ~ Kevin Wignall

Yes, there's such a thing as luck in trial law but it only comes at 3 o'clock in the morning. You'll still find me in the library looking for luck at 3 o'clock in the morning. ~ Louis Nizer

The increasing legal pressure against archives has created anxieties among researchers, librarians, and journalists. They cite the need to protect sources who wish to make a record for posterity; procuring documents and interviews from those sources will be difficult if the fruits are only one subpoena away from disclosure. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their 'unbeliefs.' Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the intellectual equivalent of that time.

In past centuries many theists savagely attacked atheists on the ground that someone without a belief in God must be a moral 'monster,' who would permit any action. This argument is rarely heard today, as the number of people who are openly atheists has become so large that its falsity is self-evident. Atheists do have a moral code to guide them. It is usually based upon the Golden Rule, plus a variety of utilitarian reasons, although there are a number of other possible systems. Rather than being immoral, most atheists are extremely moral.

There are a large number of people who can and do manage to lead decent upright lives with no use for a belief in God as a guide. Atheists do not care whether others believe as they do. They do ask, however, for the right to believe as they wish .... ~ Gordon Stein

I'm not a child, Dad. And I'm not grounded anymore, remember?'
'Oh yes, you are. Starting now.'
'For what?'
'Because I said so.'
'Do I need to remind you that I'm a legal adult, Charlie?'
'This is my house, you follow my rules!'
My glare turned icy. ' If that's hoe you want it. Do you want my to move out tonight? Or can I have a few days to pack?'
Charlie's face went bright red. I instantly felt horrible for playing the move-out card.
I took a deep breath and tried to make my tone more reasonable. 'I'll do my time without complaining when I've done something wrong, Dad, but I'm not going to put up with your prejudices. ~ Stephenie Meyer

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil. ~ Max Lerner

I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities. ~ Lawrence Lessig

The entrance into the family of an outside professional with legal authority is always a crisis-ridden event, but it may be the best insurance that the incest will not continue. ~ Janis Tyler Johnson

We need a tougher enforcement program and, most importantly, we need to fix the badly broken ethics system. ~ Marty Meehan

If truth and moral values are relative, one cannot claim that certain human rights are universally applicable to all cultures and all people. ~ Stephen McAndrew