Linux Law

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
                -- H. L. Mencken

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.
                -- U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10. (Bill of Rights)

The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
voters to win the next election.

The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.

The Worst Jury
        A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when
one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the
remotest clue what was happening.
        The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any
evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
        The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second
juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English.  A fluent French
speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he
was hearing a murder trial.
        The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered
from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language
and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
        The judge ordered a retrial.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
tied during the month of April.

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law.
No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
                -- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates"

There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest.  For example, when he
filed his income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary
as 'unearned income.'
                -- Michael Lara

"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial."
                -- David Letterman

There's no justice in this world.
                -- Frank Costello, on the prosecution of "Lucky" Luciano by
                   New York district attorney Thomas Dewey after Luciano had
                   saved Dewey from assassination by Dutch Schultz (by ordering
                   the assassination of Schultz instead)