The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

Every lawyer of experience comes to know (more or less unconsciously) that in the great majority of cases, the precedents are none too good as bases of prediction. Somehow or other, there are plenty of precedents to go around.

To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness.

Justice is what the judge ate for breakfast.

The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

To vest a few fallible men — prosecutors, judges, jurors — with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill called a "moral police," is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products. If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do likewise to a work of genius.

Any treatment of an illness that does not also minister to the human spirit is grossly deficient.