Legal Ethics and
Reform
Famous Quotes & Interesting Statistics About Lawyers, Judges, etc.
Note: A new item is added to this list every week. Check back to
have your preconceptions about our legal system challenged. After
finishing this page, your are invited to visit
An Earlier Famous Quotes and Interesting Statistics Page, which
contains the entries that were posted during 1997.
..."a lean award is better than a fat judgment"...
. Benjamin Franklin
..."Only by God's grace can I integrate my religion
and my professional life."...
. Robert W. Nixon
... "many attorneys never read their (malpractice
insurance) policies until a claim is made against them (and not
always then)."
. Ronald E. Mallen
.... "Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret
any written or spoken laws, it is he who is truly the lawgiver,
to all intents and purposes and not the person who first wrote or
spoke them." ...
. Bishop Hoadly 1717
..."This edition is dedicated to the trial judges of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Underpaid, lacking adequate support
staff and funding, often working in decrepit and unsafe
courthouses, they continue in their commitment to public service.
They are in the front line of the effort to deliver equal justice
to all"..
. Paul J. Liacos (from his book
entitled Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence)
..."associations of lawyers are the most dangerous of
any next to the military"...
. N.Y. Gov. Cadwallader
Colden
..."Thomas More was born in London in 1478. ...entered
Oxford to study law ... then entered Parliment .... He attracted the
attention of Henry VIII who appointed him to a succession of high
posts. However, he resigned in 1532 when Henry VIII persisted in
holding his own opinions regarding marriage and the supremacy of
the Pope. In 1534 he refused to render allegiance to the King as
Head of the Church of England and was confined to the Tower of
London. Thomas was tried and convicted of treason. He told the
court that he could not go against his conscience and wished his
judges that 'we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet
together to everlasting salvation'. .. on the scaffold he told
the crowd of spectators that he was dying as 'the King's good
servant - but God's first'. He was beheaded on July 6, 1535."...
. Rev. Hugo Hoever PhD
..."an attorney who abandons a case without just cause
before completing the task for which his client hired him
breaches his contract of employment and forfeits all right to
compensation."
. Staples v. McKnight 763
S.W2d 914
(Tex App. 1988)
"I've lost the gem of my character"
. Attorney
Abe
Lincoln, 1842, Springfield, Illinois
..."On an extremely conservative estimate, the over
sixteen poor person encounters an average of one legal problem
per year; as one welfare rights lawyer put it, poor people are
constantly bumping into sharp legal things. If we suppose that a legal
problem requires only one hour to solve .... we arrive at over twenty
million hours of necessary legal services that by and large are not
provided." ...
. David Luban
..."A lawyer has several loyalities in his work. They
include that to his client, to the administration of justice, to
the community, to his associates in practice, and to himself.
When these loyalities conflict, the standards of the profession
are intended to effect a reconciliation."...
. Encyclopaedia Britannica
..."Liberal jurisprudence like the liberal legislation it
mimics, has been shaped by a 'progressive' agenda. This is why
constitutional law, once comprehensible, has become hopelessly
confusing. An extra-constitutional agenda has made some clauses
of the Constitution mean things never intended, implied, or envisioned
by those who ratified the orginial document or its later
amendments. The same agenda has made other clauses meaningless.
So studying constitutional law no longer means grasping the
principled logic of the whole; it means memorizing a long series
of zigzagging, seemingly ad hoc court rulings."
"Most people,
baffled, tune it all out. But a few clever lawyers, find the new
system a congenial environment to operate in, partly because it
is closed to all but 'experts'. The general public is suspicious
of this system, but helpless against it. The Clintons are quite
comfortable in it; both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are lawyers, and the
president briefly taught constitutional law. They have learned to
make the system pay them dividends, while deploring other
people's 'greed'."...
. Joseph Sobran
"Father, what do you do? Are you down at the university?"
"Yes, I teach ethics to the medical students down at the
university."
"Oh that's interesting, I suppose the law school uses priests to
teach ethics as
well."
"No, the law school handles ethics training with their own
law professors."
. An exchange between Hugh Murray and Rev.
Pat Norris, O.P.
..."Prosecutors at the Federal, State and local levels
should be appointed, never elected, and they should be prohibited
from ever running for elected office. This change would
discourage these prosecuters from misusing their discretionary
power to either prosecute or not prosecute offenders. Today
prosecutors many of whom are planning to run for elective office
in the future have a strong desire to pander to the public's
intense desire for law and order."...
. Jerome Miller
Take Me To: