His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.
Quotations about:
legality
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Unkindness has no Remedy at Law.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English writer, physician
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #5402 (1732)
(Source)
The rack, or question, to extort a confession from criminals, is a practice of a different nature; […] an engine of the state, not of law.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4 “Of Public Wrongs,” ch. 25 “Arraignment” (1769)
The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted.
George Sutherland (1862-1942) Anglo-American jurist, Supreme Court Justice (1922-1938)
Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465, 469 (1935)
A government of laws, and not of men.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
“Novanglus” #7, Boston Gazette (6 Mar 1775)
Adams credited the line to James Harrington (1611-77), who wrote of "the empire of laws and not of men" (The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)). Adams later used the term in the Massachusetts Constitution, Bill of Rights, article 30 (1780).
The layman’s Constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn’t like is unconstitutional. That about measures up the Constitutional acumen of the average person.
