Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

Crime is simply a convenient monosyllable which we apply to what happens when the brain and the heart come into conflict and the brain is defeated.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

Justice is open to everyone in the same way as the Ritz Hotel.

Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.

An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain — the equality of all men.

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.

The trouble with the laws these days is that criminals know their rights better than their wrongs.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.

Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.

No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is.

Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.

There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers in the first place.

It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

The more laws the more offenders.

Law: the only game where the best players get to sit on the bench.

It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any.

Law never made men a whit more just.

If you don't know there's a trampoline in the room, you're not going to dust the ceiling for prints.

A certain witty advocate, Marchand, observed: "One would risk being disgusted if one saw politics, justice, and one's dinner in the making."

Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try.

In keeping people straight, principle is not as powerful as a policeman.

When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation.

There are many things the law does not forbid, which nevertheless it silently condemns.

Men sin and the law punishes; the law sins and the devil rewards.

I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.

We don't give our criminals much punishment, but we sure give 'em plenty of publicity.

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

The sun is but a little swinging ball; The hills are tiny, and the seas are small; The sky is not so lofty, after all. But see! This man we're hanging—in him lies, No matter what the guilt for which he dies, A living soul, and who can guess its size?

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Poverty is the mother of crime.

When I see the Ten Most Wanted Lists... I always have this thought: If we'd made them feel wanted earlier, they wouldn't be wanted now.

Legislative acts murder more men than the assassin.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.