“In 1993, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that, under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence (which covers both civil trials and criminal prosecutions in the federal courts), a ‘trial judge must ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable.’ The Court indicated that the subject of an expert’s testimony should be scientific knowledge, so that ‘evidentiary reliability will be based upon scientific validity.’ The Court also emphasized that, in considering the admissibility of evidence, a trial judge should focus ‘solely’ on the expert’s ‘principles and methodology,’ and ‘not on the conclusions that they generate.’ In sum, Daubert’s requirement that an expert’s testimony pertain to ‘scientific knowledge’ established a standard of ‘evidentiary reliability.’” – Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community, National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward
Category: Politics & Law
“There are two ways in which the identification of the law of nature with the rule of man’s unfallen, or his regenerate, condition may tend to radical conclusions. To associate the natural with the unfallen state is to approach the general type of thought now described as primitivistic. To associate it with a regenerate condition presents, on the other hand, some affinity with the type of thought known as perfectibilitarian. In the eighteenth century these two types were to furnish, separately and together, the dominant modes of radical thinking. Discontent with the existing social order issued in the cry of ‘back to nature,’ or in the cry of ‘onward to perfection.’ Then the happy discovery was made that the two things were really identical: in order to go onward to perfection one had only to go back to nature for one’s rule. But before this blessed state of confusion could be achieved dogma must have disappeared or have been interpreted so figuratively that nothing but the smudged outline of its pattern persisted. In some of the radicals of the Puritan revolution these processes are seen at work.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Scripture is the rule for the church; the law of nature, the only rule for the state. To attempt to introduce the Mosaic Law into the constitution of the state under the guise of natural law is sophistical. Nor are we left without strong indications of what the law of nature teaches in the civil sphere: it teaches that the people not only designate the persons of their governors, but bestow upon them all their power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Where civil liberty is entire, it includes liberty of conscience; where liberty of conscience is entire it includes civil liberty.” – James Harrington, Political Aphorisms
“The fact that there is a Puritan doctrine of liberty, whatever its limitations, is immensely important. Repeatedly Puritanism brings the question of liberty up for discussion, and this is a major service. While operating within the prescribed bounds of ‘Christian’ liberty, Puritanism, further, does a great deal to foster the notion of individuality, and an individualistic outlook, with results partially, though not wholly, favourable to democracy.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“The function of the state is to preserve peace and order and to guarantee the freedom of the individual; a wise government will be more willing to repeal old laws than to enact new ones, for the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice, but liberty is the best school of virtue.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Human nature being what it was, a measure of democracy was the best protection against tyranny.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Objectives in practical politics are always limited and generally selfish.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“The strong Puritan impulse to action results in the constant intrusion of religion into the secular sphere in an effort to enforce the standards of the holy community upon the world, and in a marked tendency to press on, in the name of that ideal, from the quest for religious liberty to the quest for political power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Had not God given the Israelites kings, and whenever they could do so with impunity, had not that model people knocked them about?” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“The law taken abstract from its original reason and end is made a shell without a kernel, a shadow without a substance and a body without a soul. It is the execution of laws according to their equity and reason, which is the spirit that gives life to authority.” – John Lilburne, a/k/a Freeborn John (quoted by A. S. P. Woodhouse in Puritanism & Liberty)
“The particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void.” – Chief Justice Marshall, United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison (1803)
“It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it.” – Chief Justice Marshall, United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison (1803)
“When the legislature proceeds to impose on that officer [i.e., the President] other duties; when he is directed peremptorily to perform certain acts; when the rights of individuals are dependent on the performance of those acts; he is so far the officer of the law; is amenable to the laws for his conduct; and cannot at his discretion sport away the vested rights of others.” – Chief Justice Marshall, United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison (1803)
“The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury. One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection. [The] government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.” – Chief Justice Marshall, United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison (1803)
“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” – Justice Holmes, United States Supreme Court, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)(internal citations omitted)
“Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the county more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanor from the parish where he chuses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman, and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing who they think proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the law-giver lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“The famous have an exclusive legal right during life to control and profit from the commercial use of their name and personality.” – Circuit Judge Merritt, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, Memphis Development Foundation v. Factors Etc., Inc., 616 F.2d 956 (1980)
“The gist of this claim is that Carson is embarrassed by and considers it odious to be associated with the appellee’s product. Clearly, the association does not appeal to Carson’s sense of humor.” – Senior Circuit Judge Bailey Brown, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, Carson v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc., 698 F.2d 831 (1983).
“The unwritten law possesses capacity for growth; and has often satisfied new demands for justice by invoking analogies or by expanding a rule or principle. This process has been in the main wisely applied and should not be discontinued. Where the problem is relatively simple, as it is apt to be when private interests only are involved, it generally proves adequate. But with the increasing complexity of society, the public interest tends to become omnipresent; and the problems presented by new demands for justice cease to be simple.” – Justice Brandeis, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“An essential element of individual property is the legal right to exclude others from enjoying it. If the property is private, the right of exclusion may be absolute; if the property is affected with a public interest, the right of exclusion is qualified. But the fact that a product of the mind has cost its producer money and labor, and has a value for which others are willing to pay, is not sufficient to ensure to it this legal attribute of property. The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions—knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas—become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use. Upon these incorporeal productions the attribute of property is continued after such communication only in certain classes of cases where public policy has seemed to demand it. These exceptions are confined to productions which, in some degree, involve creation, invention, or discovery. But by no means all such are endowed with this attribute of property. The creations which are recognized as property by the common law are literary, dramatic, musical, and other artistic creations; and these have also protection under the copyright statutes. The inventions and discoveries upon which this attribute of property is conferred only by statute, are the few comprised within the patent law.” – Justice Brandeis, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“Property, a creation of law, does not arise from value . . . . Property depends upon exclusion by law from interference.” – Justice Holmes, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“The right of the purchaser of a single newspaper to spread knowledge of its contents gratuitously, for any legitimate purpose not unreasonably interfering with complainant’s right to make merchandise of it, may be admitted; but to transmit that news for commercial use, in competition with complainant—which is what defendant has done and seeks to justify—is a very different matter.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“The rule that a court of equity concerns itself only in the protection of property rights treats any civil right of a pecuniary nature as a property right; and the right to acquire property by honest labor or the conduct of a lawful business is as much entitled to protection as the right to guard property already acquired.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) (internal citations omitted).
“The peculiar value of news is in the spreading of it while it is fresh; and it is evident that a valuable property interest in the news, as news, cannot be maintained by keeping it secret.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“The news element—the information respecting current events contained in the literary production—is not the creation of the writer, but is a report of matters that ordinarily are publici juris; it is the history of the day. It is not to be supposed that the framers of the Constitution, when they empowered Congress ‘to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries’ (Const. art. 1, § 8, par. 8), intended to confer upon one who might happen to be the first to report a historic event the exclusive right for any period to spread the knowledge of it.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).
“One witness who was initially confused stayed and purchased a beer.” – Circuit Judge King, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. v. Capece, 141 F.3d 188 (1998), fn. 7.