Best Legal History Quotes

"In the end, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to release these Oval Office tapes to government investigators."

"This case was the first time cat DNA was used as evidence in a criminal trial in the UK."

"Equal opportunity or equal rights for minorities is not the norm; it is unusual, and the United States even having something like the 14th Amendment makes it unique among nations in the history of the world."

"So Roe v. Wade was the 1973 decision that effectively legalized abortion up to a certain point."

"While neither San Francisco nor California formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy, and systematic repression and exclusion of black people were codified through legal and extra-legal actions."

"The authors of the 14th Amendment knew that no one in the United States is above the law, not even the president."

"The US Bill of Rights was the first modern attempt to articulate the fundamental human rights enjoyed by all peoples."

"The Bill of Rights is an extension of the Magna Carta and essentially brought the Magna Carta into Parliament and common law."

"Roman law, honed over the centuries, would prove foundational to the success of not only their civilization but the many civilizations which followed."

"What you get in Magna Carta is the idea of the rule of law. It says every individual, even the king, is under the same law."

"I'm reminded of when Microsoft was sued by the Department of Justice for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows."

"Justinian's reign is really one major step in the development of the modern concept of law."

"Separate is equal? That's not right. Brown vs. Board of Ed."

"A huge moment in American culture and criminal law with legendary American comedian and actor Bill Cosby being convicted."

"This would be the first ever indictment of Trump for actions taken as president."

"This case is one that the Justice Department will probably consider one of the biggest and most important cases in its history."

"These snapshot details of imperial life are what really brings the law to life for me."

"It just goes to show that's a literally exactly 300 or possibly 301-year-old case."

"Jim Crow laws systematically stripped black citizens of their rights."

"Cloaked in stigma and Terror his deeds made him the youngest person to ever face death row."

"The Eichmann trial put the Holocaust on the cultural map."

"The frightening future he alleges where presidents are seldom if ever prosecuted because they have to be impeached and convicted first is the one we have lived through for the last 235 years."

"The very laws we consider are ones to protect people were developed within feudalism."

"It's historic in a way that that you can't overstate uh the fact that it's charging a former president of the United States with a crime has never happened."

"Their fight ultimately won workers the right to sue for damages from corporations."

"There are principles going back 800 years to Magna Carta holding that people cannot be punished by the state without being sentenced by a speedy trial of peers."

"The first criminal trial of a former president of the United States is happening."

"This is not some radical deviation from our constitutional history; it's a continued expression of it."

"More importantly though is what Magna Carta stands for in both the history of England and in America."

"Worlds kicks off in Wuhan on the 23rd of September, and we cannot wait to see you there."

"Donald Trump is officially the first former president of the United States in the United States history to officially be criminally indicted by a grand jury."

"Krista Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution making her the youngest woman ever to be sentenced to death in the U.S."

"The judge Lord Matthews gave Angus Sinclair 37 years in prison, the longest sentence in Scottish legal history."

"It's certainly the most historic moment inside of a courtroom In Our Lifetime."

"The decrees of Nueva planter would essentially merge the legal and jurisdictional domains of both Castile and Leon and Aragon together."

"When gambling became legal in Nevada, Siegel saw the opportunity of a lifetime."

"It used to be deadly punishment for small crimes."

"Anyone considered infam was unable to serve in the Army, unable to serve on a jury, to vote, or to represent others in court."

"We have never in the history of our nation had a federal criminal trial that warrants audiovisual access more than the federal prosecution of President Trump."

"For the first time in our nation's history, a grand jury has charged a former president with committing crimes while in office."

"The only legal definition of marriage since the founding of America has been the union of a man and a woman."

"Racism is still happening, and it was illegal for interracial couples to be married in Alabama as soon as 2001, I believe it was."

"The economy grew, sophisticated Roman legal practice resumed and intellectual output once again flourished."

"The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in U.S. v. Nixon might have been wrongly decided."

"Never before have we seen a former president charged criminally at the federal level with trying to overturn an election."

"Faith in the central bank is what is the driving force of big moves in Gold up and down."

"Sure, the Warren Court marked a bit of a liberal shift, but today we know it was a shift that was desperately needed."

"The first time a former United States president has been indicted on crimes."

"Reflects the historical importance of jury trials in protecting individual rights."

"Understand, my source is Mexicans legally were white for a very long time in this country."

"Griffin's case provided the background for the Congressional enforcement legislation."

"There's a reason Section 3 has been dormant for 150 years."

"On December 17 1928 he was condemned to a mandatory life sentence at Sing Sing prison for his fourth conviction."

"In my eyes one of the most iconic legal battles at the start of this era of litigation happened in the early to mid 1970s."

"Roe v Wade was an incredible thing for pro-life."

"The Zenger case advanced freedom of the press."

"A momentous event as it clearly showed that statutory law held precedence in the mind of the people over the wishes of the monarch."

"Ultimately Roman law honed over the centuries would prove foundational to the success of not only their civilization but the many civilizations which followed in their footsteps."

"The trial began on March 30th, 1978, with one newspaper stating that this case had generated more attention than any trial since the Nuremberg trials."

"Before Roe v Wade... abortion was left up to the state... Now, what's interesting about that... is that there's this ongoing experiment."

"The law was intended to prohibit dressing up as the opposite sex in order to intermingle with single-sex groups for illicit purposes."

"The right to self-defense is a natural right going back to the Magna Carta."

"That might rise to the level of anti-competitive behavior that has been illegal since the 1890s, I think the Sherman Act was initially passed."

"The youngest person ever to sit on death row was George Junius Stinney Jr."

"The stakes are too high... it looks like millions of American women are going to be denied the right that we have understood they've had since 1973."

"Abortion rights have been the law of the land for almost 50 years."

"Donald Trump's very first encounter with the law came in 1973 when he and his father were accused by the Justice Department of violating the civil rights of people trying to rent apartments in New York."

"The doctrine of discovery is codified in the statutes of modern nation-states, establishing their territorial borders and authority."

"He introduced the Napoleonic Code which reformed civil law across France."

"Generations of lawyers have lived and worked inside these lovely old Tudor buildings."

"If Mueller goes there, and if Mr. Pecker is willing to go back as far as that, then we can talk about historical crimes."

"The courts seem very keen to determine who is a serf or is servile and who's actually free."

"It's not going to be built just on law itself, just as we've had laws against slavery, we've had laws against Jim Crow, we've had laws against segregation."

"The Murderous Midwife: On December 23, 1890, Mary Pearcey was executed at Newgate Prison for the gruesome murders of Phoebe Hogg and her baby daughter."

"The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared all persons born in the United States to be full-fledged citizens regardless of race or previous condition of servitude."

"By the time of the framing of the English Bill of Rights... was a prohibition on either carrying unusual and dangerous weapons."

"The civil rights laws were written strictly and solely for black folk."

"There were actually laws in the books that said black folk couldn't do certain things."

"Since the founding of this country, it has always been legal to manufacture your own firearm at home."

"Now in 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States had occasion to re-examine the Fourth Amendment."

"Roe v wade struck down laws prohibiting abortion on the grounds that they were a violation of a woman's right to privacy."

"Our rights as individuals ultimately trace back to the Magna Carta and we shouldn't forget that."

"I stand on the shoulders of so many who have come before me, including Judge Constance Baker Motley, who was the first African-American woman to be appointed to the federal bench."

"The last of the ugly laws weren't repealed until 1974, less than 50 years ago."

"Against All Odds, Judy became the first person in history to testify in her own homicide."

"The death of Marilyn Shepherd followed by the arrest, the trial, and the long road to exoneration for her husband, Dr. Sam Shepherd."

"For nearly half a century, women in this country have relied on Rhodes recognition that our constitutional right to privacy includes the right to decide when to have a child."

"It's a significant moment in legal history. $43 billion is awarded to Roger which is the biggest civil lawsuit award in history."

"The legal thinking behind the code would even survive beyond the end of feudalism and serve as the backbone to the Napoleonic code, the largest law reform of the modern age."

"Judge Treber is really in the forefront of urging judges like himself, again, this handful of southern district judges whose memory has been lost to history and whose cases have been lost to Legal history."

"The legal precedents that are developed during the Civil War ultimately become the precedents that are used today."

"It's very impressive in a way what Bork and Scalia and others did in terms of constitutional law."

"The business of trying to cement judicial policy preferences into the constitution did not begin with Dred Scott and unfortunately, it did not end there."

"Clarence Darrow ended the hearing with a two-hour long speech, basically a plea for mercy."

"Dred Scott versus Sanford: arguably the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court."

"He's known for the scopes monkey trial creation versus evolution he's known for defending leopold loeb during bob frank's murder in the 1920s so he was dead set against the death penalty."

"It would be the first time in U.S. legal history that a psychic would take the stand and describe how her visions helped to solve a murder."

"The radium girls' lawsuit paved the way for future workers' rights."

"Their lawsuit exposed the dark underbelly of corporate negligence."

"In the study of ancient legal systems, scholars have observed connections between Greek and biblical legal traditions. This posed a challenge."

"Henry III also reigned under a re-drafted Magna Carta, this again protected the major Barons rights and limited Royal Powers."

"One of the most important aspects of Henry II's reign was the changes that took place in the English legal system."

"The formation of this common law would really be the one that most people would point to."

"Many consider the charter to be a crucial pillar of modern parliamentary rights and legal principles including habeas corpus."

"Magna Carta would henceforth be considered law for all men and women."

"The Miranda case was hugely important because it represented the high water mark of the Warren Court's criminal procedure revolution."

"The idea that women had rights came very much from the British rule of law."

"Presumption of innocence until proven guilty thought to have originated during the era of the good emperors."

"The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law."

"Industrial exposure led to lawsuits, the most expensive mass tort in legal history."

"The Magna Carta... had lasting implications on how government should be structured, including the enduring ideal that no one was above the law, not even a king."

"For the first time ever in American history, a former president of the United States has been indicted."

"They were the first country to legalize same-sex marriage."

"Kenneth, who was known as the Conqueror, created the first system of laws in the region."

"The outcome of said trial led to a first in English legal history."

"The phrase 'Robin Hood in Barnsdale stood' was a legal saying meaning that something was a well-established fact."

"It was an explicit legal structure for hundreds of years in this country."

"The framers were not operating in a vacuum; they were incorporating legal terminology that had been in use for centuries."

"The UK abolished capital punishment in 1965 for murder."

"The Magna Carta... limited executive authority."

"The Magna Carta... set up the principle of due process of law."

"Brown versus Board of Education was really the first time in the court's history that it stated, and has stated it unanimously, that racial segregation violates the Constitution."

"What ended alcohol prohibition in my country was not great political leadership; it was an unwillingness of 12 Americans to sit on a jury and put a 13th in jail for making gin in their bathtub."

"Japanese laws once prohibited vehicle modification of any kind, and enthusiasts were forced to operate illegally before creating enough influence to push their passion into the mainstream."

"Dred Scott versus Sanford is arguably the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court."

"Remember that our laws were initially governed after those from England, common laws, which meant that women really had no rights."

"Some states have just said this is too complicated; this law is six hundred years old, and we just kind of want to make it as easy as possible, so we're going to consolidate false pretenses, larceny, and embezzlement into a single crime called theft."

"...the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments nullified this decision against Dred Scott."

"...all that started with Dred Scott."

"This year is also very special for us at ICC because it's the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the ICC Court International Court of arbitration."

"The Dred Scott case was also about the lives and fates of one man and his family."

"The compilation of the Theodosian code... became the new law code of the Roman Empire."

"Venice enacted something called the patent statute, also known as the monopoly law, the first in the patent system in the world."

"The history of the insanity defense goes back hundreds of years and informs the mishmash of laws and customs practiced in U.S. law."

"The notion of our Supreme Court... is taken directly from the Council that Solon set up."

"The laws of Hammurabi... as soon as you get legal codes, you have lawyers."

"Every day in courtrooms half the world over, decisions are made rooted in the legal framework laid out in the Corpus Juris Civilis."

"The Nuremberg trials are the first international court in history."

"What amendment ended prohibition? It was the 21st."

"The legal history begins at Howard University Law School."

"Oral sex was illegal in Canada until 1969."

"The trial of John Peter Zenger helped promote the idea of freedom of the press."

"The right to bear arms as a concept in American law was brought over from Britain."

"This is the first trial in American history to use a computer animation as evidence."