Learned Hand
Learned Hand
Billings Learned Handwas a United States judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Hand has been quoted more often by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States than any other lower-court judge...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth27 January 1872
CountryUnited States of America
law regulation stuff
Every smallest step of modern industry depends upon a cooperation whose maintenance and regulation is the very stuff of law.
character past 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.
running risk ends
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
law political ears
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
reflection color environment
Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
empty-vessels history use
The use of history is to tell us what we are, for at our birth we are nearly empty vessels and we become what our tradition pours into us.
law community important
The legal relations between the individual and the community which arise out of the production and distribution of property, comprise by far the greater, and more important, part of the law; subtract these and very little content would be left.
justice democracy rations
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
political support doubt
No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.
answers action life-is
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.
people justice democracy
It is the daily; it is the small; it is the cumulative injuries of little people that we are here to protect....If we are able to keep our democracy, there must be once commandment: THOU SHALT NOT RATION JUSTICE.
change past choices
We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.
country media hands
The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
lying believe heart
I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it.