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William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield on Justice

1705–1793 Scotland

← All quotes by William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

22 quotes

An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing.

Fisher v. Prince (1762)

The law protects nothing in that very respect, in which it is, at the same time, in the eye of the law, a crime.

Fictions are allowed against all the King's subjects for the furtherance, but never for the hindrance, of justice.

The way to do complete justice indeed, is to let in the one side, without prejudicing the other.

Give your decisions, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong.

s Advice; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Very happily, the more the law is looked into, the more it appears founded in equity, reason, and good sense.

Where a real ground is laid, the Court will take care that justice is done to the defendant as well as to the plaintiff.

Uncertain justice by a verdict is much better than certain injustice.

I will consider it upon the Precedents; upon the circumstances of this case; and upon the Reason of the thing.

If no reason had been given, the authority might have had more weight: but, to be sure, the reason is a false one.

There is no positive law: Many things are bad by that, which otherwise were not.

A mere evasion, colour, disguise and device to evade the law.

Never trust any note cited, when not consonant with the general principles of law, justice, and equity. It must be wrong.

Anciently, the Courts of justice did sit on Sundays.

Swann v. Broome (1764)

If we give an opinion, we can't give a judgment: you can't come here for an opinion to us.

The Judges are totally independent of the ministers that may happen to be, and of the King himself.

Give your judgments, but give no reasons.

To be sure, it is a very important case, though very imperfectly reported in the printed cases, which make an impossibility, by making the senior Judge speak first.

If I was wrong, I should think it more honourable to acknowledge and rectify any error that I should have committed, than to justify and defend it.

We must go upon general principles.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.