<P> Mentions of justice delayed and denied are found in the Pirkei Avot 5: 7, a section of the Mishnah (1st century BCE--2nd century CE): "Our Rabbis taught:...The sword comes into the world, because of justice delayed and justice denied ...", and the Magna Carta of 1215, clause 40 of which reads, "To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice ." </P> <P> Martin Luther King, Jr., used the phrase in the form "justice too long delayed is justice denied" in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail", smuggled out of jail in 1963, ascribing it to a "distinguished jurist of yesterday". </P> <P> As Chief Justice of the United States Warren E. Burger noted in an address to the American Bar Association in 1970: "A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law--in the larger sense--cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets ." </P>

Justice delayed is justice denied debate in favour