The Rule of Law

The scene below is from "A Man for All Seasons" by Robert Bolt, a play about Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England.

Scene: A character named Richard has just left the room where More, his wife, daughter, and son-in-law Roper are, and from the context of the play it is clear that this person is planning to join More's enemies and betray him.

[More's wife]: Arrest him!

[More's daughter]: Father, that man's bad.

More: There's no law against that.

Roper: There is! God's law!

More: Then God can arrest him.

More: Sophistication upon sophistication!

More: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal, not what's right. And I'll stick to what's legal.

Roper: Then you set man's law above God's!

More: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact-I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. [...]

[Daughter]: While you talk, he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road throught the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast- man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis has said, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."