The Four Corners of the Law is a term commonly used to refer to the intersection of Meeting and Broad Streets in Charleston, South Carolina.
The term was coined in the 1930s by Robert Ripley, creator of Ripley's Believe it or Not!. St. Michael's Episcopal Church, constructed between 1752 and 1761, stands on the southeast corner of the intersection. In its churchyard are the graves of John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, signers of the United States Constitution. On the northeast corner of the Four Corners is Charleston City Hall, constructed in the Adamesque style between 1800 and 1804. Across the street, on the northwest corner, stands the Charleston County Courthouse, originally constructed in 1753 as South Carolina's provincial capital, the building was rebuilt in 1792 for use as a courthouse. On the southwest corner is the United States Post Office and Federal Courthouse, built in 1896. The term "Four Corners of the Law" represents the presence of institutions representing federal, state, local and ecclesiastical law on each corner of the intersection.
Famous quotes containing the words corners and/or law:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)