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Every lawyer of experience comes to know (more or less unconsciously) that in the great majority of cases, the precedents are none too good as bases of prediction. Somehow or other, there are plenty of precedents to go around.

— Jerome Frank Law and the Modern Mind (1930)

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More quotes by Jerome Frank

The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness.

Courts on Trial (1950)

Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial.

Law and the Modern Mind (1930)

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts.

Law and the Modern Mind (1930)

To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism.

Law and the Modern Mind (1930)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jerome Frank (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.