It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
Interpretation
We should not enforce rules that do not exist yet.
This quote emphasizes the idea that individuals and institutions should not act upon or enforce laws or principles that have not been established. It reflects a belief in the importance of due process and the structured development of legal frameworks, reminding us that the application of justice should be grounded in existing precedent and regulations rather than speculative interpretations.
In practice
In a legal debate about new legislation, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for existing laws before judgments are made.
It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.
But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.
But I really think it's a very unfortunate part of our judicial system and I would feel much, much better if more states would really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is a special potential for error. We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.
There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.
Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.
When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.
Unity, to be real, must stand the severest strain without breaking.
No organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. .. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions.
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