The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
Interpretation
Judges must adhere to the law and not act on personal ideals.
This quote emphasizes the role of a judge in the legal system, suggesting that a judge should not be swayed by personal ideals of beauty or goodness, akin to a knight-errant. Instead, a judge must act within the boundaries of the law, upholding justice impartially and without personal bias.
In practice
During a legal seminar discussing the importance of impartiality in the judiciary.
Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion.
History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.
The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with the Constitution, overrides the law of judges. In this sense, judge-made law is secondary and subordinate to the law that is made by legislators.
There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them, and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.
Law never is, but is always about to be.
In law, as in every other branch of knowledge, the truths given by induction tend to form the premises for new deductions. The lawyers and the judges of successive generations do not repeat for themselves the process of verification any more than most of us repeat the demonstrations of the truths of astronomy or physics.
The most interesting conversation is not about why Donald Trump lies. Many public figures lie, and he's only a severe example of a common type. The interesting conversation concerns how we come to accept those lies.
Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.
The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
History is neither written nor made without love or hate.
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
You take your problems to a god, but what you really need is for the god to take you to the inside of you.
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