The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.
Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.
If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.
If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature.
All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.
We cannot uphold the rule of law only when it is consistent with our beliefs. We must uphold it even when it protects behavior that we don't like or is unattractive or is not admirable or that might even be hurtful.
Those who consent to the act and those who do it shall be equally punished.
Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
God's commandments are not given to limit or punish us.
The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.