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Examples

  • If there was ever a justifiable democratic case for removing all the hereditary peers, then a fortiori is there now now a case for expelling all the life peers.

    Archive 2008-07-01 Not a sheep 2008

  • An army of professionals, a fortiori, is based on a strict selection of applicants, contrary to conscription (there is no need to reflect the so-called diversity and evolutions of the society, and to manifest in their ranks the trends that characterize ordinary people).

    Matthew Yglesias » Don’t Ask Don’t Tell 2010

  • Yesterday's term was a fortiori, which is defined as:

    Define That Term #4 2006

  • In case of absence of a text on the case at hand, the search for the presumed intent of the legislator is required by deduction, including reasoning by analogy (le raisonnement par analogie), that is to give the case at hand the same treatment given to a past case when they are similar and united in the same causation; or the reasoning a fortiori, that is to apply to the case terms considered in another case to have a stronger causality than the case at hand, in other words when the conditions for the case at hand are more suitable for applying the law than those stipulated by the legislator, which is a logical device that emphasizes causation of stronger cases for application to weaker ones.

    The Daily Star > News Feed 2009

  • The susceptibility of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, constitutes a right in every creature endowed therewith in relation to every rational and moral being, -- a 'fortiori', therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the absolutely good

    Literary Remains, Volume 1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • The so called Jack’s insistence that the US participation in the NATO intervention in the Balkans made Clinton a war criminal, while nonsensical on its face, is at the same time clearly an argument on his part that the US participation in the NATO intervention in Afghanistan is a fortiori evidence that George W. Bush is a war criminal.

    Matthew Yglesias » Conservatives’ Unhinged Attacks on Nancy Pelosi 2009

  • [The plaintiffs in Gonzales v. Carhart did not raise this issue, but the concurrence by Justices Thomas and Scalia indicated that they might have voted against the federal ban, if theplaintiffs had raised the commerce clause.] A fortiori, at least as Glenn and I see things, the interstate commerce power does not include the power to compel every American in buy a congressionally-designed product.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Pretending that no law professors question Obamacare 2010

  • An act of genocide is not speech; a fortiori* it is not an “free speech” (nor a “form of” free speech I suppose, though I am not clear what you mean by that phrase).

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Could Students Be Suspended for “Beat the Jew” Game 2010

  • It is difficult for me not to conclude a fortiori that, if we can wait the cessation of hostilities before releasing prisoners of war, enemy combatants could not be detained indefinitely (or, to be precise, until the end of this long war).

    Matthew Yglesias » Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism 2010

  • A fortiori, these provisions seem to imply that the United States would have been guilty of a war crime for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    War Crimes, Past and Present 2009

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