Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.

As a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth.

In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.

In an instant, the law was transformed: from the last passenger on the safe-haven bandwagon to a pioneer into uncharted territory. For the first time in American history, it was not only legal to relinquish a baby; in Nebraska, it was okay to abandon any child of any age for any reason at any time - with the full protection of the law.

We need to be discussing issues specifically to help the American people. And that would not include illegal aliens. These are people - I'm for immigration - legal immigration. I've been an immigration attorney. But people who have come to our country and violated laws, we should not be providing full health care services.

The American legal industry is a medieval guild in which the prosecutors, bar, and bench join hands to ensure that legal invoices are paid, no matter how excessive.

The president, just as any other American, deserves a legal defense against personal lawsuits not related to his office. But the costs of that defense should be borne by him and not the taxpayer.

I think the issue is that Americans traveling abroad if gotten into legal problems should have access to a fair trial and an impartial tribunal.

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

Nearly every study shows that competition from cheap foreign labor undercuts the wages of American workers and legal immigrants.

We have used the presence of UNMIK, as well as other European and American agencies to establish a legal framework compatible with the European Union and that is already an advantage. We have seen the positive effects of this and our parliament will continue to go this way.

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

I've always considered making it legal for Americans to import their prescription drugs a free-trade issue. Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers.

I think we Americans, of all people, understand the importance of a good, legal, constitutional framework as the basis of political life.

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

American foreign policy needs to be driven by what will get results and what is legal, not by what satisfies our primal instincts of revenge.

The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.

We will not lift a single finger or spend a single cent to be a cog in the Trump deportation machine, and we won't be complicit in his effort to make American great again by reengineering the legal immigration system.

We need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American Dream.

Does being practical mean we prop up a legal system that's unfair, that bears its weight down on black men and black women, and by extension if you are Hispanic or indigenous or poor? Does being practical mean you don't say to the American people you deserve better than you're getting? That's not the practical we want.

Does the imam have a legal right to build the mosque at Ground Zero? The answer is yes. But is it the right thing to do? The answer is no. And most Americans, and most moderate Muslims, join with me in that call.

I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.

Like all other law-abiding Americans, I fully support legal immigration.

Americans are guaranteed the constitutional right to legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, and it's past time for Republicans to stop using the issue as a political football. In fact, it's past time for Republican politicians to stop interfering in women's personal lives, period.