The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community.

Trial by jury is a privilege of the highest and most beneficial nature [and] our most important guardian both of public and private liberty. The liberties of England cannot but subsist so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, ... but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it.

Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.

Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

Man must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator. This will of his Maker is called the Law of Nature. This Law of Nature is superior to any other. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.