Wisdom Tooth Мы начинаем публикацию афоризмов и изречений из коллекции профессора Жанны Генриховны Аванесян, декана факультета лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации Московского Государственного Открытого Университета. Мы уверены, что этот материал будет неоценимым подспорьем для студентов и преподавателей "юридического" английского. Это и темы для сочинений и докладов, и эпиграфы к выступлениям, и пища для размышлений. Цитаты сгруппированы по темам в соответствии с уроками из учебника Just English. Английский для Юристов. Базовый курс что облегчает их использование в учебном процесе.
THE NEED FOR LAW
The law is light. Fish die when they are out of water, and people die without law and order. The law is reason, free from passion. Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances. Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them. Laws, like houses, lean on one another. The good of the people is the greatest law. When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. Where the law ends tyranny begins. Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue. Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty. Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns. There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion. It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
CRIME AND CRIMINALS"Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal." "The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague." "Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions." "Successful crimes alone are justified." "Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass." "Crime generally punishes itself." "Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is also true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on." "If poverty is the mother of crime, lack of good sense is the father."
PUNISHMENTPunishment is justice for the unjust. The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness. I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. Let the punishment be proportionate to the offense. In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating. Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain have any other effect than a hardening one. All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance. Every guilty person is his own hangman. The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin. There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse. It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace. Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. And where the offence is, let the great axe fall. If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order. The punishment of criminals should serve a purpose. When a man is hanged he is useless.
JUSTICEJustice is truth in action. Nothing is to be preferred before justice. The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom. Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both. The essence of justice is mercy. Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British Statesman, Prime Minister Justice consists of doing no one injury, decency in giving no one offense. The foundation of justice is good faith. There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court. Sentences are like sharp nails, which force truth upon our memories. Justice is incidental to law and order. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Time is the justice that examines all offenders. [As You Like It]
JURYA jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read. The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
POLICEWe live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police. Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. I never write "Metropolis" for seven cents because I can get the same price for "city". I never write "policeman" because I can get the same money for "cop". Police - An armed force for protection and participation. Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police. Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.
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