Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.  ~Erik Pepke

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.  ~Anatole France (Jacques Anatole François Thibault), The Red Lily, 1894Crainquebille; PMB, p272

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.  ~Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations

A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.  ~Bill Vaughan

One of irony’s greatest accomplishments is that one cannot punish the wrongdoing of another without committing a wrongdoing himself.  ~Anonymous

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.  ~Edmund Burke

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.  ~William Ernest Hocking

Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.  ~Edgar Argo in Funny Times

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime.  Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime.  It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.  ~Emma Goldman, AnarchismMHC

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.  ~Howard ScottPMB; PCR

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Having your fate rest in the hands of a jury is the same as entrusting yourself to surgery with a mentally retarded doctor.  ~Bill Messing, quoted in Dream World, by Fred WoodworthMHC

Just because the power is out doesn’t mean we unplug the constitution.  ~Law and Order, "Darkness"

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There is no such thing as justice – in or out of court.  ~Clarence Darrow, 1936MCTO

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.  ~Robert Frost

Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent.  ~Justinian I, Law Code, A.D. 535WLBUQ

Men are too unstable to be just; they are crabbed because they have not passed water at the usual time, or testy because they have not been stroked or praised.  ~Edward Dahlberg, The Sorrows of Priapus, 1957WLBUQ

It’s strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.  ~Author unknown, quoted in Sunshine magazine

The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be.  ~Lao-tzu

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.  ~Tacitus, AnnalsMHC

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.  ~Henry David Thoreau

The more laws the more offenders.  ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732WLBUQ

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.  ~George Herbert

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The trouble with the laws these days is that criminals know their rights better than their wrongs.  ~Author Unknown

Hug a police officer.  It’s the law!  ~Author Unknown

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Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts.  ~H.L. MenckenCUL

We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?  ~Will Rogers

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.  ~Charles Evans Hughes

Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes.  The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men – and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented…. Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime.  As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort – as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.  ~Robert Ingersoll, Crimes Against CriminalsMHC

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.  ~Leo Tolstoy, What I BelieveMHC

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Poverty is the mother of crime.  ~Marcus Aurelius

If you don’t know there’s a trampoline in the room, you’re not going to dust the ceiling for prints.  ~From the television show Law & Order

An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain – the equality of all men.  ~Ignazio Silone

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.  ~Peter Kropotkin, Words of a RebelMHC

There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick.  ~Grover Whalen

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.  ~Remy de GourmontCUL

It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.  ~Mae West

It is not a Justice System.  It is just a system.  ~Bob Enyart

It is easier to commit murder than to justify it.  ~Aemilius Papinianus (Papinian), quoted in Barry Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law, p. 30 n.2 (1962)

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms.  They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.  ~Charles T. Sprading, Freedom and its FundamentalsMHC

Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.  ~Attributed to both Bert Masterson and Earl Wilson

Corn can’t expect justice from a court composed of chickens.  ~African ProverbCUL

A rule that cannot be bent will certainly be broken.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm living public opinion.  ~Wendell Phillips

Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves.
~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act II, scene 2; MCTO

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In keeping people straight, principle is not as powerful as a policeman.  ~Abel Hermant, Le Bourgeois, 1906WLBUQ

I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.  ~Tom Clark

Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.  ~John Godfrey Saxe, 1869quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/08/laws-sausages (Thanks, Garson O’Toole of quoteinvestigator.com!)