Alexander Bickel famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.
-- Alexander Bickel

#War #Law #Judging
[The judiciary is] the least dangerous branch of our government.
-- Alexander Bickel

#Government #Branches #Dangerous

To the Parisians, and especially to the children, all Americans are now 'heros du cinema.' This is particularly disconcerting to sensitive war correspondents, if any, aware, as they are, that these innocent thanks belong to those American combat troops who won the beachhead and then made the breakthrough. There are few such men in Paris.
We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.
The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.
Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they've not idea what money's for- Ten to one they'll start another war. I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'! Fancy giving money to the Government!
The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, theres never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.
But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.

Alexander Bickel famous quotes

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