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.
Interpretation
Lawsuits are infrequent and often devastating, with conflicts usually stemming from factual disputes rather than legal ambiguities.
This quote by Benjamin N. Cardozo emphasizes that while lawsuits are uncommon and can lead to significant disruption in people's lives, the core issues at stake frequently concern the facts of the case rather than complex legal interpretations. Cardozo highlights the stark reality that many legal disputes are straightforward in terms of law, leaving little room for judges to exercise discretion, which contrasts sharply with the emotional and personal turmoil commonly associated with legal battles.
In practice
In a legal seminar discussing the nature of lawsuits, this quote illustrates the emotional toll of litigation.
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.
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
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 agreement of the parties cannot make that good which the law maketh void.
The hardest problems of all in law enforcement are those involving a conflict of law and local customs. History has recorded many occasions when the moral sense of a nation produced judicial decisions, such as the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required difficult local adjustments.
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
Reaching a conclusion has to start with what the parties are arguing, but examining in all situations carefully the facts as they prove them or not prove them, the record as they create it, and then making a decision that is limited to what the law says on the facts before the judge.
The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
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