Lewis F. Powell, Jr. famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building, it is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists...it is fundamental that justice should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

#Law #Availability #Justice
History balances the frustration of 'how far we have to go' with the satisfaction of 'how far we have come.' It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

#Frustration #Our Generation #Imperfection
Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

#Ideas #Judging #Competition
The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

#Mean #Color #Guarantees
An orderly society cannot exist if every man may decide which laws he will obey.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

#Men #Law #May

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.
Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.
There is no justice in following unjust laws.
How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.
Labor is the law of happiness.
He said, 'They're only whores,' as though their very availability rendered them worthless.
But even in the absence of direct interference by those who had the power to interfere, the process was usually aborted by the non-availability of one of more elements of the process - the accumulated stock in a money form, the labor-power to be utilized by the producer, the network of distributors, the consumers who were purchasers. One or more elements were missing because, in previous historical social systems, one or more of these elements was not commodified or was insufficiently commodified.
Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.
A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
Earth's dispossessed are vulnerable targets for extremists: those who teach that global justice is meaningless; that satisfaction can come only in violence, division, and intellectual isolation.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. famous quotes

You may also like: