Writs Of Assistance Quotes:

I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is.

- James Otis

source: "James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance". James Otis' speech (February 1761), as quoted in William Tudor "James Otis's Speech on the Writs of Assistance", books.google.com. 1906.

topic: Hands, Dying, Slavery, Writs Of Assistance, Villainy

Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty, is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ of assistance, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege.

- James Otis

source: Argument against the writs of assistance, Boston, Mass., Feb. 1761. Burton Stevenson, Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (1948), traces the proverb "A man's house is his castle" back to 1567 and notes legal usages of it by Sir Edward Coke in the seventeenth century. See Coke 1; Coke 8; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham 2

topic: Men, Law, House, Assistance, Guarded

And I take this opportunity to declare, that ...I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me...the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of the constitution, that ever was found in an English law-book.

- James Otis

source: "James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance". James Otis' speech (February 1761), as quoted in William Tudor "James Otis's Speech on the Writs of Assistance", books.google.com. 1906.

topic: Book, Opportunity, Hands, Law Books, Assistance

MAY it please your Honors: I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning Writs of Assistance.

- James Otis

topic: Book, Eugenics, Honor, Writs Of Assistance

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

- Louis D. Brandeis

source: Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

topic: Freedom, Men, Evil, Beneficence, Lurking

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

- Louis D. Brandeis

topic: Government, Liberty, Purpose, Justice Truth, Law Courts

I do not say that, when brought to the test, I shall be invincible.

- James Otis

topic: Tests, Invincible, Writs Of Assistance

Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him, until the trump of the Archangel shall excite different emotions in his soul.

- James Otis

source: "James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance". James Otis' speech (February 1761), as quoted in William Tudor "James Otis's Speech on the Writs of Assistance", books.google.com. 1906.

topic: Men, Tyrants, Soul, Desolation, Different Emotions

A man is accountable to no person for his doings.

- James Otis

source: "James Otis's speech on the Writs of assistance" edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Edward Channing, William Tudor, Hart, Albert Bushnell,.

topic: Men, Doings, Persons, Writs Of Assistance

I'd say that [Louis] Brandeis practiced a kind of a "living originalism," to use the title of Jack Balkin's great book. He said you start with the paradigm case, which in the case of the Fourth Amendment was these general warrants or writs of assistance, but you define it at a level of abstraction that you can take it into our age and make it our own.

- Jeffrey Rosen

source: Source: www.slate.com

topic: Book, Age, Titles, Warrants, Louis Brandeis