Robert Atkyns (judge)

Sir Robert Atkyns KB KS (1621–1710) was an English Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Member of parliament, and Speaker of the House of Lords.

Quotes

Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

• We ourselves of the present age, chose our common law, and consented to the most ancient Acts of Parliament, for we lived in our ancestors 1,000 years ago, and those ancestors are still living in us.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1204.

• A people whom Providence hath cast together into one island or country are in effect one great body politic, consisting of head and members, in imitation of the body natural, as is excellently set forth in the statute of appeals, made 24 H. 8, c. 12, which stiles the King the supreme head, and the people a body politic (these are the very words), compact of all sorts and degrees of men, divided into spirituality and temporality. And this body never dies.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1204.

• The best men are but men, and are sometimes transported with passion.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1206.

• The laws alone are they that always speak with all persons, high or low, in one and the same impartial voice. The law knows no favourites.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1206.

• There is no providence or wisdom of man, nor of any council of men that can foresee and provide for all events and variety of cases, that will or may arise upon the making of a new law.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1208.

• And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a mischief is meant, when one man or some few men suffer by the hardship of a law, which law is yet useful for the public. But an inconvenience is to have a public law disobeyed or broken, or an offence to go unpunished.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1208.

• It is the more fit for the Supreme Court to give some certain rule in it that may regulate and guide the judgment of inferior Courts.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1213.

• Pleading is an exact setting forth of the truth.
  • 11 How. St. Tr. 1243.