Jerome Frank Quotes

• Justice is what the judge ate for breakfast.

  Jerome Frank

  Justice, Judging, Breakfast

  8 Copy quote

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

  Jerome Frank

  Trials, Outcomes, Lawyer

  Jerome Frank (2017). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.231, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

• Any treatment of an illness that does not also minister to the human spirit is grossly deficient.

  Jerome Frank

  Doe, Spirit, Illness

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• 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.

  Jerome Frank

  Civilization, Doubt, Lines

  Jerome Frank (1930). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.261, Transaction Publishers

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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

  Majority, Lawyer, Predictions

  Jerome Frank (2017). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.207, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

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

  Jerome Frank

  Civilization, Quality, Tests

  Jerome Frank (1977). “A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• To vest a few fallible men — prosecutors, judges, jurors — with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill called a "moral police," is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products. If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do likewise to a work of genius.

  Jerome Frank

  Book, Eye, Writing

  "A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank".

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• The inexpressible is the only thing that is worthwhile.

  Jerome Frank

  Expression, Worthwhile

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• Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization.

  Jerome Frank

  Wisdom, Civilization, Doubt

  Jerome Frank (1930). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.261, Transaction Publishers

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• 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.

  Jerome Frank

  Sleep, Community, May

  Jerome Frank (1930). “Law and the Modern Mind”, p.171, Transaction Publishers

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• We want no dictatorship of physicists, as physicists. If our democracy is to realize its full promise, we want no dictatorship at all - of any species. What we want and need is the enlightened and active interest of all men of intelligence and goodwill in their government, and their participation in its functions.

  Jerome Frank

  Men, Intelligence, Promise

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

  Jerome Frank

  Impression, Remove, Aloofness

  Jerome Frank (1973). “Courts on Trial: Myth and Reality in American Justice”, p.8, Princeton University Press

  4 Copy quote

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