REX LEX VEX
Thumbing through quotes on the law is an interesting exercise.
For example, I discovered that Nixon was simply paraphrasing a longstanding legal maxim:
The King can do no wrong.
Legal maxim
From the Latin 'Rex non potest peccare'.
When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Richard Nixon
Something that has always puzzled me is the injustice of punishing people for breaking complex and convoluted laws, which ordinary individuals could not possibly know or understand, based on the following principle:
Ignorance of the law, which everybody is supposed to know, does not constitute an excuse.
Legal maxim
From the Latin 'Ignorantia juris quod quisque scire tenetur non excusat'.
17th Century jurist, John Selden explains why:
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him.
John Selden
This expediency then, should prompt us, if justice be served, to make few, simple, comprehensible laws, and to institute some form of acquaintanceship of the law in the educational curriculum, so they become, indeed, “something everybody is supposed to know.”
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene Descartes
The prospect of fewer, simpler laws is unlikely as long as lawyers dominate the three branches of government, prevailing, as they do, in Congress, the White House and the Judiciary. (So much for separation of powers.) Lawyers dominating politics will tend to fulfill a Parkinsonian-style dictum: “Laws expand to fill the time of those making them.” All of which leads us back to Shakespeare:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI Part 2.
Perhaps a less draconian solution would be to popularize a new political slogan: “Elect No Lawyers.”
But even that would not completely solve the injustices inherent in the law:
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Oliver Goldsmith
An argument, therefore, for: “Public funding of political campaigns.”
And finally a somber warning from two who should know:
Arms and laws do not flourish together.
Julius Caesar
The laws are silent in the midst of arms.
Cicero