Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
707
AUTHOR:
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941)
QUOTATION:
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal—would bring terrible retribution.
ATTRIBUTION:
Justice LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, dissenting, Olmstead et al. v. United States, 277 U.S. 485 (1928).
