Notable Quotes

For centuries, everyone from Presidents to paupers have been talking about equal justice, what it means to go without it, and the difficult and as yet unsuccessful struggle to achieve this noble goal. Occasionally, words are written or uttered which are worthy of repetition -- because of the content, or the elegance of the language, or sometimes because of the stature of the source. Some of these quotes are notable because the words can move us to action. Others teach us or warn us or even amuse us. The National Equal Justice Library has begun collecting some of the more impressive quotations we have managed to cull from speeches, judicial opinions, books and articles.

We anticipate those visiting this section of the "Equal Justice Update" website may gain inspiration or insight from reading some of these quotations. In addition, you may be able to use one or more to spice up a report, an article, or a speech. We hope this compendium of quotes is helpful in that sense, too.

We recognize this compendium is incomplete at this stage and probably never will include all the notable quotations on this subject that have appeared in publications or speeches over the centuries. So we encourage visitors to this website to send us their favorite quotes that in anyway relate to legal services, indigent defense, or the entire subject of equal access to justice. If the quote has any relevance, we will add it to this website.

"Eventually,...the higher law of the modern constitution may become the guarantor of positive laws that make the modern right to legal aid fully effective. If such a point is ever reached, the modern world will have given a truly 'legal' answer to the legal problems of the poor, who will no longer have to depend upon the powerful, as they did under the 'political' answer of the Romans, nor upon the merciful, as they did under the 'charitable' answer of the Middle Ages."

- Professor Mauro Cappelletti, TOWARD EQUAL JUSTICE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LEGAL AID IN MODERN SOCIETIES (1975) page 75,

"Don't I think a poor man has a chanst in coort? Iv coorse he has. He has th' same chanst there that he has outside. He has a splendid, poor man's chanst."

- Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley on the Choice of Law 168, 173 (1963),

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread -- the rich as well as the poor."

- Anatole France, Crainquebille, 1902

"To such a height th' Expence of courts is gone, That poor Men are redress'd -- till they're undone."

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734

"Equality is equity."

- Richard Francis, Maxims of Equity, 1728

"The safety of the people requireth further, from him, or them that have the Sovereign Power, that Justice be equally administered to all degrees of People; that is, that as well the rich, and mighty, as poor and obscure persons, may be righted of the injuries done them; so as the great, may have no greater hope of impunity, when they doe violence, dishonour, or any Injury to the meaner sort, than when one of these, does the like to one of them: For in this consisteth Equity; to which, as being a Precept of the Law of Nature, a Sovereign is as much subject, as any of the meanest of his People."

- Thomas Hobbs, LEVIATHAN, Part II, Chapter 30,

"Except for the few that legal services lawyers can represent, poor people have access to American courts in the same sense that the Christians had access to the lions when they were dragged, unarmed, into a Roman arena."

- Earl Johnson, Jr., quoted in Becker and Gibberman, On Trial! (1987) page 17,

"Equal justice, or anything approaching that goal, requires that poor people be afforded advocates possessing both the right and the capacity to raise the same fundamental issues about the allocation of income, opportunity, rights and power as those with funds have done since the beginning of the Republic."

- Earl Johnson, Jr., JUSTICE AND REFORM (1974) page 279,

"At some point, Americans will look back and ask how concepts like 'due process,' 'equal protection of the law' and 'equal justice under law' were anything but hollow phrases, while our society still tolerated the denial of counsel to low-income civil litigants."

- Earl Johnson, Jr., Beyond Payne: The Case for a Legally Enforceable Right to Representation in Civil Cases for Indigent California Litigants, 11 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 240, 250 (1978),

"All crimes are safe but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues."

- Samuel Johnson, London, 1738

"Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country."

- Leviticus 24:22, ,

"These are the bounds...put...to the legislative power of every commonwealth ....[T]hey are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at court and the countryman at plough."

- John Locke, THE SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, Chaper XV, Paragraph 171,

"If the affluent flagrantly disregard the law, the poor and the deprived will follow their leadership."

- Robert M. Morgenthau, New York Times, June 26, 1969

"The law for the rich and poor is not the same."

- Plautus, Cistellaria, c. 200 B.C.

"There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice."

"Lawyers are operators of toll bridges across which anyone in search of justice must pass."

- Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek, October 9, 1978

"Differences in the ability of classes to use the machinery of the law, if permitted to remain, lead inevitably to disparity between the rights of classes....And when the law recognizes and enforces a distinction between classes, revolution ensues or democracy is at an end."

- Reginald Heber Smith, JUSTICE AND THE POOR (1919) page 12,

We can end the existing denial of justice to the poor if we can secure an administration of justice which shall be accessible to every person no matter how humble.

- Reginald Heber Smith, JUSTICE AND THE POOR (1919) page 257,

"In cases wherein new important points of law and matters of general legal or social interests are involved, it is essential that legal aid organizations should be able to carry the issue through to the highest court for its decision.

"Just as the legal aid organizations are necessary to secure to the individual poor person his day in court, so they are necessary to secure his hearing on appeal. But the latter is more than a question of individual justice; on it may depend the right to protection and redress of countless other persons similarly situated."

- Reginald Heber Smith, JUSTICE AND THE POOR (1919) pages 206-207,

"It early became apparent,...that if legal aid societies were to be effective in their fight against injustice, they must...take a part in the formulation of remedial legislation. They saw cases of injustice which the law was powerless to redress because of the inadequacy of certain provisions or the lack or proper laws framed to meet the changed conditions."

- Reginald Heber Smith, JUSTICE AND THE POOR (1919),

"Substantive and procedural law benefits and protects landlords over tenants, creditors over debtors, lenders over borrowers, and the poor are seldom among the favored parties."

- John N. Turner, Attorney General of Canada, Speech to Canadian Bar Association, December 7, 1969

"What does it profit a poor and ignorant man that he is equal to his strong antagonist before the law if there is no one to inform him what the law is? Or that the courts are open to him on the same terms as all other persons when he has not the wherewithal to pay the admission fee?"

- Yale Professor WIlliam Vance, "The Historical Background of the Legal Aid Movement," THE ANNALS (March 1926),

"All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws."

- Voltaire, Essay on Manners, 1756

"Always look to the future as it holds more than the past. Always look to the past as it will improve the future."