I once remarked that ignorance was the best of law reformers.
Oliver W. Holmes Jr. (April 26, 1892),
in a letter to Frederick Pollock
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The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.
The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become. We must alternately consult history and existing theories of legislation. But the most difficult labor will be to understand the combination of the two into new products at every stage.
The substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then understood to be convenient; but its form and machinery, and the degree to which it is able to work out desired results, depend very much upon its past.
~ O.W. Holmes Jr.
The Common Law (1881).
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"the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. . . . That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution."
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"If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought--not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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The Great Dissenter.
In their dissent, justices William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Edward T. Sanford argued that Congress had the policing power to correct recognizable evils. The effects of Adkins v. Children's Hospital were reversed in West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish (1937), when the Supreme Court overturned the position adopted by the court's conservative majority.
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Hammer v. Dagenhart was a test case in 1918 brought by employers outraged at this regulation of their employment practices. Dagenhart was the father of two boys who would have lost jobs at a Charlotte, N.C., mill if Keating-Owen were upheld; Hammer was the U.S. attorney in Charlotte.
In a notable dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed to the evils of excessive child labour, to the inability of states to regulate child labour, and to the unqualified right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce--including the right to prohibit.
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We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.
~ H. L. Mencken
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We have no respect for most of our representatives and chiefs
Respect is earned, does not come free, or as part of the job.
All of us or our ancestors came here both to escape something cruel or missing in our ancient homelands, and to build some new experiment in which the government under our control tries to help us rather than robbing, torturing and killing us. And who has done better -- building a new people of a hundred races and nations, of people who at their best can help and love each other to struggle for peace and liberty against the odds, against the old hatreds of the past and above all -- with speech so free and alsolute that we can argue every where and while in hope a truth can emerge and make us free.
Without question, the US has done a better job by a large margin, but the key words are: government under our control. Government is out of control, its representatives are a band of arrogant despots who think they can get away with anything they fancy. They will twist, spin and re-create laws and definitions to suit their specific objectives, influenced by those groups who funded their placement.
The only known antidote to such tyranny is a higher level of education by the members of this society. This will allow such members to achieve a better standard of living and to lead productive lives. No government program will achieve the same.
The US has been able to achieve so, not thanks to the politicians, but thanks to the concept, or ideal that it represents. The freedom of the individual to pursue his/her hapiness/success(not guaranteed).
Luckily for us all, the economic well being of the last few years has afforded the current leaders their excesses, a great tribute to the economic power of this country. In other words, so long we are economically sound, we are capable to allow these Bozos their orgies of absurdity, primarily because they are ignored/tolerated, out of frustration.
But even that has a limit, modern technology is slowly but surely liberating the common man to the point where the politician will either become totaly irrelevant, or they will pay more attention to their customer, i.e. the taxpayer.
Long subject.... hardly the one for "Favorite Quotes".
As for the mysterious "D"... My guess is Peter Drucker.
"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday's logic."
---Peter Drucker
Born in Vienna, Austria 1909.
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"Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution." P. 193, A Pledge of Allegiance (1945).
Learned Hand |
