We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.
Interpretation
The law should be guided by moral principles and values, prompting us to consider both its current state and its ethical implications.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing that laws are not just arbitrary rules; they are built upon moral foundations. It encourages us to critically evaluate existing laws and to ask ourselves not only what they currently dictate, but what they ought to dictate in terms of justice and ethical standards. It serves as a reminder that the evolution of law is tied to our moral responsibilities as a society.
In practice
In a law seminar discussing the ethical implications of recent legislation.
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.
The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.
Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.
Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?
We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.
An intellectual inferiority of the masses would manifest itself most evidently in their aiming at the abolition of the system in which they themselves are supreme and are served by the elite of the most talented men.
A human being is part of a whole called by us the universe.
The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random.
Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.
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