Learned Hand Quotes About Judging

Quotes about: Judging

• The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others. That is to say, the momentum of his utterances must be greater than any which his personal reputation and character can command, if it is to do the work assigned to it - if it is to stand against the passionate resentments arising out of the interests he must frustrate - for while a judge must discover some composition with the dominant trends of his times, he must preserve his authority by cloaking himself in the majesty of an overshadowing past.

  Learned Hand

  Character, Past, Judging

  The New York Times, October 06, 1963.

• Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.

  Learned Hand

  Loyalty, Believe, Political Opinions

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

• The profession of the law of which he [a judge] is a part is charged with the articulation and final incidence of the successive efforts towards justice; it must feel the circulation of the communal blood or it will wither and drop off, a useless member.

  Learned Hand

  Blood, Law, Justice

• It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.

  Learned Hand

  Issues, Impact, Judging

  "The Bill Of Rights". Book by Learned Hand, p. 72, 1958.

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