Law and Lawyers

The first thing we do, let’s kill all lawyers.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 2

Ninety-nine per cent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
Steven Wright

This is a British murder inquiry and some degree of justice must be seen to be more or less done.
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

The basic test of a decent police force is that it should catch more criminals than it employs.
Robert Mark, ex-Police Commissioner

The majestic egalitarianism of the law, which forbids rich and poor people alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France, The Red Lily

The law-courts of England are open to all men, like the doors of the Ritz Hotel.
Charles, Lord Darling

Laws are like sausages: if you like them, don’t watch them being made.
Otto von Bismarck

The scandalous part of most scandals is often not the lawbreaking but the law itself.
Michael Kinsley

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
Charles Dickens

A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, any more than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table.
Jean Kerr

Lawyers, not poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind.
Columnist Simon Carr

I have come to regard the law-courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.
Richard Ingrams, in the Guardian

A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Maxwell

Laws are like spiders’ webs: if some poor weak creature comes up against them it is caught; but a bigger one can break through and get away.
Solon, an Athenian statesman

When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.
Sydney Smith

I do not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but I believe the gentleman is an attorney.
Samuel Johnson

A qadi [judge] who, when two parties part in peace,
Rekindles their dispute with binding words.
Indifferent to this world and its luxuries, he seems,
But in secret, he wouldn’t say no to camel dung.
Oh, people, pause and hark
To the charming qualities of our qadi,
A homosexual, drunkard, fornicator, and takes bribes,
A tell-tale liar whose judgements follow his whims.
Ibn Ayas on Ibn al-Naqib, the Egyptian Chief Justice, Mameluke era (1250–1517)

My definition of utter waste is a coachload of lawyers going over a cliff, with three empty seats.
Lamar Hunt on the increasing problems of litigation in the American National Football League

PRISONER (in the dock after being sentenced to be hanged): My Lord, spare me: I am a product of my upbringing.
JUDGE: So am I! Send him down.

YOUNG BARRISTER: My lord, my unfortunate client … my lord, my unfortunate client … my lord, my … my …
LORD ELLENBOROUGH: Go on, sir, go on. As far as you have proceeded hitherto, the court is entirely in agreement with you.
Lord Ellenborough

JUDGE: Counselor, are you trying to show contempt for this court?
LAWYER: No, your Honour, I’m trying to conceal it.

Possibly not, m’Lud, but you are much better informed.
F.E. Smith to a judge who failed to understand one of the barrister’s legal speeches. The judge had told Smith: ‘I have listened to you, Mr Smith, but I am none the wiser.’

He lied like an eye-witness.
Russian proverb

George Jeffreys pointed his stick at one of the rebels hauled before him in the famous ‘bloody assizes’ saying: ‘There is a rogue at the end of my cane.’ ‘At which end. My Lord?’ retorted the man.
Anonymous

LORD SANDWICH: You will die either on the gallows, or of the pox.
WILKES: That must depend on whether I embrace your lordship’s principles or your mistress.
John Wilkes; sometimes attributed to Samuel Foote

I have forgotten more law than you ever knew, but allow me to say, I have not forgotten much.
Judge John Maynard, replying to Judge Jeffrey’s assertion that he was so old he had forgotten the law

I can’t take my chauffeur everywhere.
Derek Laud, Conservative candidate, explaining a drink-driving charge

CONVICTED CRIMINAL: As God is my judge – I am innocent.
MR JUSTICE BIRKETT: He isn’t; I am, and you’re not!
Sir Norman Birkett

[It is reported that] after a ten year stand off, Lord Longford is again visiting the Moors murderer Ian Brady. Thank goodness, a nation will sleep more soundly for knowing that, at last, this revolting psychopath is being properly punished.
Simon Heffer

The difference is that we Europeans accept we’ve all got to die of something or other. Americans think death is a calamity for which you can sue somebody.
Jonathan Miller

From every treetop some wild woods songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happy as it pursues its accustomed vocation. The gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses, and all nature, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, will be glad but you. You won’t be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff or some other officer of this country to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from the knotting bough of a sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead. And then, José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales, I further command that such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, copper-coloured, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chilli-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son-of-a-bitch.
Transcript from US District Court, New Mexico Territory, 1881, USA v. Gonzales

You are a low-down, depraved son-of-a-bitch. There were only seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them.
US trial judge sentencing Alferd [sic] Packer for cannibalism, 1874

Here comes counsel for the other side.
Sydney Smith as the lawyer Lord Brougham arrived at a performance of The Messiah