40 quotes
Magic words and incantations are as fatal to our science as they are to any other.
The Growth of the Law (1924)
I do not underrate the yearning for mechanical and formal tests.
The Growth of the Law (1924)
We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is an illusion.
The Growth of the Law (1924)
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
The Growth of the Law (1924)
The judicial process, as was said at the outset of these lectures, is a process of search and comparison, and little else.
The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)
Fulfillment may fall short of expectation. At least there has been gained a foothold from which occasion can be seized.
With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.
The curse of this fluidity, of an ever shifting approximation, is one the law must bear, or other curses yet more dreadful will be invited in exchange.
The Growth of the Law (1924)
Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
The reconciliation of the irreconcilable, the merger of antitheses, the synthesis of opposites, these are the great problems of the law...
The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
They do things better with logarithms.
The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.
The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)
In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
Nine Old Men (1936)
Deep below consciousness are other forces, the likes and the dislikes, the predilections and the prejudices, the complex of instincts and emotions and habits and convictions, which make the man, whether he be litigant or judge.
The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)
If you ask how he is to know when one interest outweighs another, I can only answer that he must get his knowledge just as the legislator gets it, from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.
The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)
The judicial process is one of compromise, a compromise between paradoxes, between certainty and uncertainty, between the literalism that is the exaltation of the written word and the nihilism that is destructive of regularity and order.
Our course of advance ... is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes.
The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.
The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
The Constitution was framed under the dominion of a political philosophy less parochial in range. It was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.
Liberty in the most literal sense is the negation of law for law is restraint, and the absence of restraint is anarchy. On the other hand, anarchy by destroying restraint would leave liberty the exclusive possession of the strong or the unscrupulous.
The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)