Famous Modern Uses
More recently, Judge James Edwin Horton referred to the maxim when he recalled his decision to overturn the conviction of Haywood Patterson in the infamous Scottsboro Boys trial. In 1933, Judge Horton set aside the death sentence of Haywood Patterson, one of nine black men who were wrongfully convicted of raping two white women in Alabama. Judge Horton quoted the phrase when explaining why he made his decision, even though he knew it would mean the end of his judicial career. Similarly, Lord Mansfield, in reversing the outlawry of John Wilkes in 1770, used the phrase to reflect upon the duty of the Court.
The phrase is engraved on the wall behind the bench in the Supreme Court of Georgia and over the lintel of the Bridewell Garda station in Dublin. The Tennessee Supreme Court uses the phrase as its motto; it appears in the seal of the Court and is inlaid into the floor of the lobby of the court's building in Nashville. During World War II, the 447th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force used the phrase as its motto, which appeared on the group's official unit markings.
In the Oliver Stone 1991 film JFK, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) says the variation, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," in reference to his investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. In the 2006 Vin Diesel comedy Find Me Guilty, the phrase is inscribed on the front of a federal judge's bench, and is translated by a defense attorney as part of his opening statement.
Read more about this topic: Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum
Famous quotes containing the words famous and/or modern:
“Richard Burton is now my epitaph, my cross, my title, my image. I have achieved a kind of diabolical fame. It has nothing to do with my talents as an actor. That counts for little now. I am the diabolically famous Richard Burton.”
—Richard Burton (1925–1984)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)