The Supreme Court is composed of two groups known as the Infallible Five and the Furious Four. The first group writes those majority decisions on patent law that have brought patent lawyers to their present condition. The second groups writes the dis...
There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stali...
What is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the li...
So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in Ameri...
The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and sup...
Talk of "witch-hunts" conceals an inconvenient fact: men charged with rape stand a better chance of walking free than other defendants. The conviction rate in rape trials – 63 per cent in 2012/13 – is quite a lot lower. Prosecutors are taking a b...
Lord Robert: When you are Queen... Elizabeth: I am not... [whispering] Elizabeth: I am not Queen yet! Lord Robert: You will be. Elizabeth, Queen of England. A court to worship you, a country to obey you, poems written celebrating your beauty, music c...
1st soldier with a keen interest in birds: Am I right? King Arthur: I'm not interested! Second Swallow-Savvy Guard: It could be carried by an African swallow. King Arthur: Will you ask your master if he wants to join my court at Camelot? 1st soldier ...
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Counselor, your clients are charged with first degree murder. How do they plead? Vinny Gambini: [sitting down] Your Honor, my clients... Judge Chamberlain Haller: Don't talk to me sitting in that chair! Vinny Gambini: But he...
Diane Court: I have this theory of convergence, that good things always happen with bad things. I know you have to deal with them at the same time, but I just don't know why they have to happen at the same time. I just wish I could work out some sche...
Mattie Ross: Who's the best marshal they have? Sheriff: Bill Waters is the best tracker. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn, a pitiless man, double tough, fear don't enter into his thinking. I'd have to say L.T. Quinn is the straightest, he brings hi...
Walter Sobchak: Now so far, we have what appears to me to be a series of victimless crimes. The Dude: What about the toe? Walter Sobchak: Forget about the fucking toe! Coffee Shop Waitress: Excuse me, sir. Could you please keep your voices down? This...
First dentistry was painless. Then bicycles were chainless, Carriages were horseless, And many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, Telegraphy was wireless, Cigars were nicotineless, And coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, The pu...
Meliorn?” said Clary. “I’ve met you, haven’t I? You used to go out with Isabelle Lightwood.” Meliorn was almost expressionless, but Clary could have sworn he looked ever so slightly uncomfortable. Luke shook his head. “Clary, Meliorn is a...
How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminal...
When the Chief Justice read me the oath,' he [FDR] later told an adviser, 'and came to the words "support the Constitution of the United States" I felt like saying: "Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new p...
In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to conver...
I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequ...
Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they gi...
The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice syst...
If the people of God were to transform the world through fascination, these amazing teachings had to work at the center of these peculiar people. Then we can look into the eyes of a centurion and see not a beast but a child of God, and then walk with...