Life Is Made Up Of

Our Common Law Is The Stock Instance Of A Combination Of Custom And Its Successive Adaptations.

If A Community Decides That Some Conduct Is Prejudicial To Itself, And So Decides By Numbers Sufficient To Impose Its Will Upon Dissenters, I Know Of No Principle Which Can Stay Its Hand.

As Soon As We Cease To Pry About At Random, We Shall Come To Rely Upon Accredited Bodies Of Authoritative Dogma; And As Soon As We Come To Rely Upon Accredited Bodies Of Authoritative Dogma, Not Only Are The Days Of Our Liberty Over, But We Have Lost The Password That Has Hitherto Opened To Us The Gates Of Success As Well.

Political Agitation, By The Passions It Arouses Or The Convictions It Engenders, May In Fact Stimulate Men To The Violation Of The Law. Detestation Of Existing Policies Is Easily Transformed Into Forcible Resistance Of The Authority Which Puts Them In Execution, And It Would Be Folly To Disregard The Causal Relation Between The Two. Yet To Assimilate Agitation, Legitimate As Such, With Direct Incitement To Violent Resistance, Is To Disregard The Tolerance Of All Methods Of Political Agitation Which In Normal Times Is A Safeguard Of Free Government.

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.