A Selection of Legal Maxims

book Herbert Broom (1845) · source

Herbert Broom’s canonical collection of legal maxims, first published in 1845 and revised through ten editions (10th ed. 1939). Each maxim is presented with its Latin formulation, English translation, and extensive case-law commentary. The maxims encode foundational principles of English common law, many inherited from Roman jurisprudence, that have migrated into everyday reasoning about justice, consent, authority, and obligation.

Entries (19)

• False in One Thing, False in All — paradigm
• Fruit of the Poisonous Tree — metaphor
• Hard Cases Make Bad Law — mental-model
• He Who Acts Through Another Acts Himself — paradigm
• Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse — paradigm
• Let Justice Be Done Though the Heavens Fall — paradigm
• Let the Master Answer — paradigm
• Letter vs. Spirit of the Law — metaphor
• Necessity Knows No Law — mental-model
• No One Gives What They Do Not Have — mental-model
• No One Is Bound to the Impossible — paradigm
• No One Profits from Their Own Wrong — mental-model
• Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law — metaphor
• Silence Gives Consent — paradigm
• The Exception Proves the Rule — metaphor
• The Law Is Harsh but It Is the Law — paradigm
• The Willing Suffer No Injury — paradigm
• Use Your Own So as Not to Harm Another — paradigm
• Where There Is a Right, There Is a Remedy — mental-model