Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When we watch courtroom dramas, we tend to identify with the kindhearted defense attorney, but give us the power, and we become like hanging judges.
No country anywhere in the world allows material that genuinely puts national security at risk into the public domain, and that includes a courtroom.
It is a hallmark of the American system of justice that anyone who appears as a litigant in an American courtroom is treated with dignity and respect.
I grew up in a courtroom kind of like the one you saw in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - big, big courtroom, sometimes it didn't even have air conditioning.
I want first-time offenders to think of their appearance in my courtroom as the second-worst experience of their lives - circumcision being the first.
If you're going to educate the public and tell them how things happen in the courtroom, then you really owe them the duty to do it right. Don't misinform.
I don't think any prosecutor should walk into a courtroom and think they're going to wow a jury with catchphrases and cliches and that kind of performance.
This is the time that I really miss being in my courtroom because I believe that that's the last place in this country where there's supposed to be fairness.
I was interested in getting courtroom experience. When I was a young lawyer, the only way I could get real courtroom experience was in the criminal law field.
I have had positive experiences with cameras. When I have been asked to join experiments using cameras in the courtroom, I have participated; I have volunteered.
Every lawyer is an actor. The place where a lawyer's acting ability shines most is certainly in the courtroom, but it works very well in the boardroom and in the office.
When I was a practising lawyer in the family court, there were too many judges who, when you left their courtroom, you didn't know whether you'd won or whether you'd lost.
Whether you watch 'Law and Order' all the time or not, everyone knows what it looks like. Everyone knows what the courtroom looks like, what the police precinct looks like.
There's an awful lot about our criminal justice system that is dysfunctional. Everyone who sets foot in a criminal courtroom will see myriad ways the system is dysfunctional.
As a novelist, I like the contained drama and complexity of the courtroom, though I don't watch those shows on TV. I prefer the hospital shows because I wanted to be a doctor.
Our religious liberty was threatened by the Obama administration as part of the Obamacare law. I was in the courtroom when that law was, I think unjustly, held constitutional.
Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this.
It's one thing to be called certain things in the media, and then it's another thing to be sitting in a courtroom, fighting for your life while people are calling you a devil.
And I've always felt comfortable certainly in a courtroom because you're just performing. And there was a time in my life when I thought when I grew up I'd be a trial lawyer myself.
And if you take the cameras out of the courtroom, then you hide, I think, a certain measure of truth from the public, and I think that's very important for the American public to know.
Well, one thing, you got to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentencing you to 25 years in prison before you realize that freedom of expression can no longer be taken for granted.
Reading a brief filled with ad hominem attacks is like listening to my kids fight, except that I have to wait until we're in the courtroom to tell the attacking lawyer what I think about it.
F. Lee Bailey had been an inspiration to me. It was my desire to have him behind the scenes, to rely on his great wisdom and his brainpower, but I did not feel he should be in the courtroom.
Before I was elected to Congress, I worked in a courtroom. For years, I defended doctors and hospitals, and for years, I sued them on behalf of people who were victims of medical malpractice.
One of the local reporters assured me Garrison would put in an appearance for the cross-examination, but as the courtroom settled down and the rear doors were closed, there was no sign of him.
I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'
Police officers must act quickly to seize wrongdoers and obtain evidence while protecting themselves and bystanders. It is easy to second-guess their search-and-seizure decisions in a secure courtroom.
To play a lawyer and have one year of law school under your belt, you sort of know what you're talking about! I'm able to memorize the legal courtroom stuff a lot faster than I would have been able to otherwise.
The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.
In the courtroom of science, if you have the facts on your side, you don't need a gun - and juries would be well advised to distrust the case of those parties who choose to use weapons to silence adversarial witnesses.
Demanding that all of us presume every defendant innocent outside of a courtroom is to demand that we stop evaluating facts, thereby suffocating independent thought and opinion. There is nothing 'reasonable' about that.
The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.
The problem with not having a camera is that one must trust the analysis of a reporter who's telling you what occurred in the courtroom. You have to take into consideration the filtering effect of that person's own biases.
This book here, 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,' in it, I put together a case against George Bush that could result - it absolutely could result in his being prosecuted for first-degree murder in an American courtroom.
I have experienced power as a journalist. On three different occasions, when I wrote about individual immigrants or refugees, the article - or, in one case, my presence in the courtroom - appeared to positively change the outcome of their cases.
A courtroom is supposed to be a place where the status quo can be disrupted - even upended - when the Constitution or laws may require, where the comfortable can be afflicted and the afflicted find some comfort, all under the shelter of the law.
I remember in high school thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I realize I saw that movie 'And Justice for All' when I was a kid and thought, 'That's what lawyers do, and I want to get up and yell and scream in the middle of a courtroom.'
What makes for a good argument, at bottom, is being more prepared than anyone else in that courtroom, and being willing to fight to tell your client's story - the story of why the right view of the law and my client's interests are one and the same.
For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years, I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction.
I know the pundits and the news media have carried a lot of commentary about cameras in the courtroom, and there's a lot of controversy about it as a result of the Simpson case. But I have not had enough time to step back and enough time to evaluate that.
The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom. That's the reality. He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so he's not captured by us. We know that.
By not trying the small cases, the lawyers don't get the courtroom experience. So when the huge, bet-the-company cases come along, there are only a handful of trial lawyers who can handle it. That's why these big corporations still call us old-timers every day.
Having a Congress with a more diverse educational and professional background would serve the country well. And given the budget challenges facing America today, we might benefit from a few more cold, calculating problem solvers, and fewer courtroom impresarios.
The idea behind 'Defending Your Life': Imagine if you had to sit in a courtroom and watch your life. I don't care who you are - if you committed a crime and you had to have all of your emails searched and made public, who on this planet could survive that? Nobody.
In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.
I was not aware of a ton of the stuff that was being said about me out in the world since I wasn't able to get British or American headlines from my prison cell in Perugia. But I was aware that in the courtroom, I was being called a succubus, a man-eater, 'Foxy Knoxy.'
I had never been in a New York courtroom. I think I went on a field trip when I was nine in New Jersey, but I never actually set foot as an adult and it was terrifying. It's very sterile, somehow. It seems so grand in the movies and it's so sterile when you're actually there.
While teaching, I also worked undercover in the lower courts by saying I was a young law teacher wanting experience in criminal law. The judges were happy to assist me but what I learned was how corrupt the lower courts were. Judges were accepting money right in the courtroom.
When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.
I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.