Justice & Law Quote by James Otis

“May it please your Honors” is the required bow, but it’s also the first mask Otis puts on before he starts pulling the courtroom apart from the inside. The line opens like routine legal deference, then quietly smuggles in a challenge: he wasn’t simply moved by private conscience; he was “desired by one of the court” to “look into the books.” That phrase is a credential and a trap. Otis frames himself as the court’s own researcher, effectively saying: I did the homework you asked for, and the law you claim to administer won’t survive it.

The subtext is institutional embarrassment. “Look into the books” signals a shift from custom and imperial convenience to textual legitimacy - statutes, precedents, the architecture of English liberties. Otis is teeing up a collision between what the Crown wants (writs of assistance: broad search powers that turned homes and warehouses into open season for customs officers) and what British constitutional identity pretends to be: constrained power, property as a boundary, due process as more than theater.

The brilliance is how he stages the fight. He doesn’t begin by moralizing about freedom; he begins with procedure, with the court’s own invitation, making resistance sound like compliance. In 1761 Boston, that’s strategic: a colonial lawyer arguing before royal authority can’t posture as a rebel outright. So he performs loyalty while sharpening the blade - implying that if the court approves general warrants, it isn’t just oppressing colonists; it’s betraying the “books” that justify the court’s existence.