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Notable Quotes

That the quest for facts is the driving force of our common law distinguishing it from the rest of the world's city (civil) law cannot be over-stressed.

Once the Jury discerns the kind of relationship between the parties before the court, this relationship kind renders up the body of law to be applied, and then all the Jury need to decide are the remaining facts of the case:

  • What happened?
  • How'd it happen?
  • Why'd it happen?
  • When'd it happen?
  • Where'd it happen?
  • Who did it?
  • Who's at fault?

—Brent Allan Winters.

The will of the state is the driving force of the civil law. The controlling question in civil-law countries now covering almost the entire globe is, what does the state command by its code? In a common-law country such as ours, the troublesome problem confronting the court and jury, says Stryker, is not so much what the law is, but what happened: did the defendant steal? Did he assault? Did he commit arson? Did he kill, and under what circumstances?

—Brent Allan Winters

He who does not willingly speak the truth, when law entitles the hearer to it, is a betrayer of the truth.

—Common Law Maxim 

Thy word is truth.

—Jesus Christ (John 17:17)

The brooding omnipresence of the law comprises its utterly inescapable consequences.

—Justice Joseph Story

Wherever Scripture is known, it reformeth all things and setteth everything in order.

—Miles Coverdale

At common law & according to the Good Book, a man's peace results from ordering his affairs according to the order of the God of all order. Peace is not the absence of battle, but one's holding fast to that order, even in the throes of battle.

—Brent Allan Winters

The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.

—USN Maxim

[T]he Supreme Being...created matter out of nothing, He impressed certain principles upon the matter, from which it can never depart… This will of [man’s] Maker is called the law of nature…

The doctrines…we call revealed or divine law…are…found only in the holy scriptures…

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.

—William Blackstone (1765)

True law cures lawlessness, condemning the lawless and guiding the lawful.

—Brent Allan Winters