I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

All women, and men of color - we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That's a big thing.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union.

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

We have a legal and moral obligation to rid our world of nuclear tests and nuclear weapons.

There can be legal conflicts over whether registering intent is enough to qualify you as an organ donor or whether a doctor must still ask your family's permission.

We must enforce the laws we have on the books, secure our borders, and deny special benefits to illegal immigrants such as in-state tuition rates. This approach is best for American citizens and is fair to those who have taken the time and effort to go through the legal immigration process.

If I was applying for a legal position, I would highlight my experience working for the San Francisco-L.A. DA's office, and I would mention some of the high-profile cases I did, but if I was looking for another television job, I would gloss over that, and I'd mention the highlight reel of what I did in television.

The entire legal system was built upon the assumption that people would have adequate representation. When they don't, the system fails, and the laws don't matter.

I'm sauteing asparagus, Brussels sprouts,broccoli, some boneless, skinless chicken breast, some halibut. That's about it; that's all I'm allowed. That's what's legal for me to saute.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are a historical document that contains moral, ethical, and legal truisms that any person of any religion or even an atheist can recognize and appreciate.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Like all other law-abiding Americans, I fully support legal immigration.

We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.

I believe we can, and must, strike a balance between our shared American values of religious liberty and freedom from discrimination. My concerns lie with the possible consequences of politically-driven legislation which claims to promote religious liberty but instead rolls back the legal protections held by LGBT Americans.

These are people who haven't gone through the legal means to becoming citizens like our forefathers did. They want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities.

Every non-political human grouping of whatever kind, legal, social, religious, economic or other becomes at last political if it creates an opposition deep enough to range men against one another as enemies.

But if we get to the point where more people do not believe in a God than who do believe in God, we will have a hollow legal system - we will have something without heart.

A lot of things that we cannot buy and sell in markets used to be totally legal objects of market exchange - human beings when we had slavery, child labour, human organs, and so on. So there is no economic theory that actually says that you shouldn't have slavery or child labour because all these are political, ethical judgments.

In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.

A national legal organization is giving very serious thought to using The Betrayal of America as a legal basis for asking the House Judiciary Committee to institute impeachment proceedings against these five justices.

Does the imam have a legal right to build the mosque at Ground Zero? The answer is yes. But is it the right thing to do? The answer is no. And most Americans, and most moderate Muslims, join with me in that call.

I have strongly rejected the proposal to pardon and transfer her to the United States. I do not have the legal power to pardon terrorists and even if I did, I would not use it.

I've always been driven by the concept of equal justice under the law, but only the rich can pay great sums of money for legal assistance and that puts them at an advantage over the poor.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

Every worker needs a decent and legal source of income.

I come from a family that has a long history in the legal community of New York and New York state.

I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.

More law, less justice.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied.

One of the things I was taught in law school is that I'd never be able to think the same again - that being a lawyer is something that's part of who I am as an individual now.

Gambling is legal and betting is legal, for what I bet.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

I don't know why legal immigration even exists anymore when I can just put on some bronzer, get on a dingy boat, and just show up at the beaches of Sicily with the Koran in my hand.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.

Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mechanism to hold authorities accountable for wrongdoing - at least sometimes - without any actual political or legal reforms having taken place. Major political power struggles and scandals are no longer kept within elite circles.

I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.

In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.

The acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice.

It costs a lot to sue a magazine, and it's too bad that we don't have a system where the losing team has to pay the winning team's lawyers.

Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.

Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.