Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

When a man is asked if he is an esquire, and he answers that he is an esquire, the general understanding is that he is a person of no profession or occupation.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Personal injury is a more serious matter than damage to property.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

I readily admit that the law which requires presumption or custom to be carried back for a period of nearly 700 years, is a bad and mischievous law, and one which is discreditable to us as a civilised and enlightened people, but such is the law; and while it so continues, I consider myself, in administering it, as bound to administer it as I find it; nor do I feel myself warranted in undermining or frittering it away by subtle fictions or artificial presumptions inconsistent with truth and fact.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

I think the old, sound, and honest maxim that "you shall not do evil that good may come," is applicable in law as well as in morals.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Whatever disadvantages attach to a system of unwritten law, and of these we are fully sensible, it has at least this advantage, that its elasticity enables those who administer it to adapt it to the varying conditions of society, and to the requirements and habits of the age in which we live, so as to avoid the inconsistencies and injustice which arise when the law is no longer in harmony with the wants and usages and interests of the generation to which it is immediately applied.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Writers on international law . . . cannot make the law … it must have received the assent of the nations who are to be bound by it. This assent may be express … or may be implied from established usage.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

A Judge cannot set himself above the law which he has to administer, or make or mould it to suit the exigencies of a particular occasion.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

Although the decisions of the American Courts are of course not binding on us, yet the sound and enlightened views of American lawyers in the administration and development of the law—a law, except so far as altered by statutory enactment, derived from a common source with our own—entitle their decisions to the utmost respect and confidence on our part.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet

The impulsive desire to save human life when in peril is one of the most beneficial instincts of humanity, and is nowhere more salutary in its results than in bringing help to those who, exposed to destruction from the fury of winds and waves, would perish if left without assistance.

— Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet