History Or Custom Or Social Utility Or

The Final Cause Of Law Is The Welfare Of Society.

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.

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.

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.

In The End The Great Truth Will Have Been Learned That The Quest Is Greater Than What Is Sought, The Effort Finer That The Prize (or Rather, That The Effort Is The Prize), The Victory Cheap And Hollow Were It Not For The Rigor Of The Game.