James Wilson
Whoever would be obliged to obey a constitutional law, is justified in refusing to obey an unconstitutional act of the legislature. When a question, even of this delicate nature, occurs, every one who is called to act, has a right to judge.
James Wilson
Martin Luther King
Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: Is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
And there comes a time one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it simply because it is right.
Martin Luther King
John Adams
It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition of the court.
John Adams
2 John Adam's Works 253-55 by Charles Francis Adams (Books for Libraries Press 1969) (1850-56).
Frederic Bastiat
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
Frederic Bastiat
Thomas Jefferson
I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Thomas Paine in 1789.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, 7 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 408 (Lipscomb and Bergh, ed., Memorial ed., 1903).