No one is above law (1894)

[Laurence Horn]

>NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW
>
>    Perhaps some legal quotations scholar out there knows more.
>    Gregory Titelman's RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF AMERICA'S POPULAR PROVERBS
>AND SAYINGS, pg. 246, has:
>
>_No one is above the law._  The law should be applied equally to all
>citizens.  The saying is of American origin and dates back to
>President Theodore
>Roosevelt.  In his Third Annual Message to Congress on December 7, 1903, the
>President said, "No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor
>do we ask any
>man's permission when we require him to obey it."

A century or so later, there was a very clever spinoff of this
proverb, I thought.  Two of the more prominent defensive backs in the
National Football League Ty Law of the New England Patriots and
Lawyer Milloy, who was dropped from the Patriots and signed by the
division rival Buffalo Bills to great acclaim just before the two
teams met in the first game of the season.  (Yes, the Pats had had
both a Law and a Lawyer in the same backfield for several years.)
The Bills won that game 31-0, but by the time of the rematch last
Sunday the Patriots had the best record in the league and the Bills
had a miserable season and a to-be-fired coach.  So during that
revenge match (won by the Patriots 31-0, of course, with Law making
an interception and Milloy doing nothing in particular), the camera
panned to a sign held by a Pats' fan in the stands reading

                        NO "LAWYER" IS ABOVE THE "LAW"

So cute I was willing to overlook the weird quotation marks.

L