Alfred Knight

Utter Justice: Verbal Glimpses into Fifteen Hundred Years of Our Legal History Alfred Knight

This book is a compilation of legal and law-related statements that have defined and characterized our legal system over the centuries. But the reader will quickly recognize that it is not a textbook in disguise. The quotations, and the actions and ideas they present and represent were selected by purely personal criteria: the author found them fascinating, important, or revealing. They range from history-changing statements (Henry II's "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest!") to purely mythological encounters (Lincoln's cross-examination of "Sovine" about the phase the moon was in when a murder took place) to royal chit-chat (a devastating remark a high-born lady made to the fugitive King James II which can be viewed as the final word on English royal tyranny) to an apology made in a casual encounter on an American street that symbolized the healing of a terrible cultural wound. The hope is to convey, not a rigid history, but a random flavor of how the law has been shaped by calculated, casual, powerful, and even silly words, uttered for the ages or merely for the moment. This disparate verbal collection tells us that our legal system is not like a carefully sculptured statue, but like a human being, is composed of all that it has known and done and said.