Opinion Has A Significance Proportioned To The

There Are Vogues And Fashions In Jurisprudence As In Literature And Art And Dress.

The Judge Is Not The Knight-errant, Roaming At Will In Pursuit Of His Own Ideal Of Beauty Or Of Goodness.

In Our Worship Of Certainty We Must Distinguish Between The Sound Certainty And The Sham, Between What Is Gold And What Is Tinsel; And Then, When Certainty Is Attained, We Must Remember That It Is Not The Only Good; That We Can Buy It At Too High A Price; That There Is Danger In Perpetual Quiescence As Well As In Perpetual Motion; And That A Compromise Must Be Found In A Principle Of Growth.

Code Is Followed By Commentary, And Commentary By Revision, And Thus The Task Is Never Done.

As I Search The Archives Of My Memory I Seem To Discern Six Types Or Methods [of Judicial Writing] Which Divide Themselves From One Another With Measurable Distinctness. There Is The Type Magisterial Or Imperative; The Type Laconic Or Sententious; The Type Conversational Or Homely; The Type Refined Or Artificial, Smelling Of The Lamp, Verging At Times Upon Preciosity Or Euphuism; The Demonstrative Or Persuasive; And Finally The Type Tonsorial Or Agglutinative, So Called From The Shears And The Pastepot Which Are Its Implements And Emblem.