Justice Holmes:
"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend. What we have to do in this case is to find the meaning of some not very difficult words. We must try,--I have tried,--to do it with the same freedom of natural and spontaneous interpretation that one would be sure of if the same question arose upon an indictment for a similar act which excited no public attention, and was of importance only to a prisoner before the court. Furthermore, while at times judges need for their work the training of economists or statesmen, and must act in view of their foresight of consequences, yet, when their task is to interpret and apply the words of a statute, their function is merely academic to begin with,--to read English intelligently,--and a consideration of consequences comes into play, if at all, only when the meaning of the words used is open to reasonable doubt."
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-01, 24 S.Ct. 436, 486, 48 L.Ed. 679 (1904) (dissenting opinion). |
