Quotes About the Law
The reasons for being a defense attorney are many and varied. We believe the following statements of the law adequately summarize our raison’ d’etre.
“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.”
-- Unknown
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
-- SIXTH AMENDMENT United States Constitution
In criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right to appear and defend in person and by counsel, to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to have a copy thereof, to testify in his own behalf, to be confronted by the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process to compel the attendance of witnesses in his own behalf, to have a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the county or district in which the offense is alleged to have been committed, and the right to appeal in all cases. In not instance shall any accused person, before final judgment, be compelled to advance money or fees to secure the rights therein guaranteed. The accused shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself, a wife shall not be compelled to testify against her husband, nor a husband against his wife, nor shall any person be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense.
-- Article I, Section 12, Constitution of Utah
The obligation of the lawyer to society is to use his special competence in the law to ensure good government, to improve law and its administration, to promote the trust of the people in the legal profession and the administration of justice, to rid the legal profession of unworthy members, to make legal assistance available to the indigent, to defend gated individuals and unpopular causes in legal proceedings, and to act in other respects as an upright and patriotic citizen.
-- SAM ERVIN, Law and Politics
This is what you shall do. Love the earth and the sun and the animals. Despise riches. Give aims to everyone that asks. Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or any number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and the young and with the mother of families . . . Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book and dismiss whatever insults your soul . . .
-- WALT WHITMAN. 1819-1892
Spotters” and spies dog their footsteps. Delators thrust themselves into bedchambers and watch at windows. Children are questioned upon the streets as to the marital relations of their parents. Families are dragged before Commissioners and grand juries; and on pain of punishment for contempt, are compelled to testify against their fathers and husbands. Modest women are made to answer shamefully indecent questions as to the sexual relations of men and women. Attempts are made to bribe men to work up cases against their neighbors. Notoriously disreputable characters are employed to spy into men’s family relations.
-- DECLARATION OF GRIEVANCES PROTEST,
Ratified and adopted, Salt Lake City, May 1885
The right to be heard would be, in many cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel. Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law. If charged with crime, he is capable, generally, of determining for himself whether the indictment is good or bad. He is unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. Left without the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge, and convicted upon incompetent evidence, or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible. He lack both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he may have a perfect one. He requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him. Without it, though he be not guilty, he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence.
-- JUSTICE SUTHERLAND, Powell v. Alabama (1932)
Some laymen criticize lawyers for defending persons the laymen believe guilty of the offenses charged. Accused persons, who may be deemed guilty or hated by the public, stand in greater need of an advocate because it may be that they are innocent. It is not the function of the lawyer to determine the guilt of persons charges with Crimes. Besides, no person is guilty in law until he has confessed his guilt or has been convicted in open court. Hence, legal ethics adjudge rightly that “a lawyer has a right to defend a person accused of crime regardless of his personal opinion as to guilt. He is bound by all fair and honorable means to present every available defense to uphold due process of law.”
When Judge David Schenk, an old-time North Carolina lawyer was asked how he could justify defending a client he believed to be guilty, he said: “one of these days I will be the accused before the Great White Throne, and Christ will be my advocate. He will certainly be defending a guilty client.”
-- SAM ERVIN Law and Politics
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged
"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
-- Robert Frost
"The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own."
- H.G. Wells
"The trouble with any unwritten law is that you don’t know where to go to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
-- Samuel Goldwyn's Law of Contracts
"We want to see three things in the 1988 Republican Party Platform... First, a constitutional amendment banning all abortions in the United States. Second, increased funding for law enforcement and a mandatory death penalty for drug dealers. Third, LESS GOVERNMENT."
-- Speaker at a 1988 Republican Straw Poll in Iowa