Justice, not expedience, must be the guiding light. The orator must fix his eye on the polestar of justice, and plough straight thither. The moment he glances toward expediency, he falls from his high estate.
Interpretation
Justice should guide decision-making rather than convenience or expedience.
In this quote, John Peter Altgeld emphasizes the importance of justice as the foundational principle for action and oratory. He warns that when one prioritizes expediency or convenience over true justice, they compromise their integrity and moral standing, leading to a downfall from their noble goals and ideals.
In practice
During a public speech advocating for civil rights, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of prioritizing justice over political convenience.
You ask whether a woman should be paid the same wages as man when she does the same work? To this, there can be but one answer. If she does the same quantity and quality of work under the same conditions as a man, simple justice requires that she should be paid the same. wages. To deny her this is to deny her justice.
The doctrine that might makes right has covered the earth with misery. While it crushes the weak, it also destroys the strong. Every deceit, every cruelty, every wrong, reaches back sooner or later and crushes its author. Justice is moral health, bringing happiness, wrong is moral disease, bringing mortal death.
If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.
I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it.
Almost one in three Americans has had some contact with the criminal justice system. When you reach that saturation point, people begin to understand, in a very visceral way, the difficulties of reentry.
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.
Courts are too distant from the communities they put on trial.
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