justice delayed is justice denied

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English

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WOTD – 17 July 2021

Pronunciation

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Proverb

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justice delayed is justice denied

  1. If a wrong is not redressed within a reasonable time, it is as though the wrong were not redressed at all. [from mid 19th c.]
    • 1838 November 23, Charles S. Spann, D. O. Williams, W. W. Hall, James Dupree, A. S. Cunningham, “Address [of the committee concerning the formation of a new county]”, in The Mississippian, volume VII, number 38, Jackson, Miss.: B. D. Howard, →OCLC, page 3, column 5:
      It is an old maxim that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ and another might be added, perhaps equally true, that justice bought is valueless.
    • [1853 April 16, “Conference in Liverpool.—Mercantile Law and the Judicial System.”, in The Manchester Guardian, number 2,533, Manchester: Printed and published for Taylor, Garnett, & Co., […], by Jeremiah Garnett, […], →OCLC, page 6, column 6:
      If, as an eminent jurist once said, justice delayed is often justice denied, it must be an object worthy of all effort to procure local courts, where speedy justice can be obtained; […]]
    • 1868 March 16, William Ewart Gladstone, Member of Parliament for South Lancashire, “Imperial Parliament. [House of Commons.—Monday, March 16. State of Ireland.]”, in The Daily News, number 6,824, London: […] William King Hales, […], published 17 March 1868, →OCLC, page 2, column 6:
      But above all, if we be just men, we shall go forward in the name of truth and right, and bear this in mind, that when the case is ripe and the hour has come, justice delayed is justice denied.
    • 1955 October 17, “The Law: Battling the Backlog”, in Henry R[obinson] Luce, editor, Time, volume LXVI, number 16, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 32, column 3:
      In British courts, lawsuits, civil and criminal, come to trial within six months. In the U.S., which professes as much respect as Britain for the principle that "justice delayed is justice denied," it takes more than four years.
    • [1984 March 13, Neal Smith, subcommittee chairman, Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1985: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, Second Session […], part 6 (The Judiciary), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 20:
      Cases may be delayed, and justice delayed may be justice denied. Sometimes the parties may die before they get justice, but theoretically all the cases are considered at one time or another anyway.]
    • 2002 July–August, Hamil Harris, “Up Front: Final Conviction Brings Church Bombing Murder Case to a Close”, in Victoria L. Valentine, editor, The New Crisis, volume 109, number 4, Baltimore, Md.: The Crisis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 10, column 1:
      "Dr. Martin Luther King said justice delayed is justice denied," says Joe Roy, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. "As a society, we need to bring closure to these cases, but it depends on the evidence and witnesses still living. In the Cherry case, they were able to get witnesses to come forward."
    • 2002 October 10, Nan Aron, Marcia Kuntz, “Prepared Statement of Nan Aron, President, and Marcia Kuntz, Legislative Director, Alliance for Justice”, in A Judiciary Diminished is Justice Denied: The Constitution, the Senate, and the Vacancy Crisis in the Federal Judiciary: Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, Second Session […], Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →ISBN, page 98:
      The old adage that justice delayed is justice denied is as true now as ever.
    • [2009, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., “Foreword”, in Aleksandr I[sayevich] Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry T[aylor] Willetts, In the First Circle […], New York, N.Y.: Harper Perennial, →ISBN, page XXIV:
      In the history of literature, justice delayed need not be justice denied.]
    • [2012 September 1, Annika Breidthardt, “Thalidomide victims: drugmaker’s apology not enough”, in Kevin Liffey, editor, Reuters‎[1], archived from the original on 1 September 2012:
      Harold Evans, Reuters editor at large who led a campaign for compensation of thalidomide victims as editor of Britain's Sunday Times from the late 1960s, said justice delayed was justice denied. "Fifty years of injustice is not to be assuaged by the most heartfelt apology, unaccompanied as it is by any compensation for the pain and suffering thousands of survivors endure every day," he said.]
    • [2021, Carol Cooper, “Rethinking Racial Equality”, in Amol Rajan, editor, Rethink: Leading Voices on Life after Crisis and How We Can Make a Better World, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN:
      We can decide whether justice delayed means justice denied and we can decide whether the 'colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes'.]

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Further reading

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