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If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

Felix Frankfurter

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Felix Frankfurter
Age: 82 †
Born: 1882
Born: November 15
Died: 1965
Died: February 22
Former Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Vienna
Austria
Means
Allowed
Part
Chaos
Firsts
Determine
First
Essential
Mean
Essentials
Every
Democratic
Men
Law
Legal
Process
Tyranny

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Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?
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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
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A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not, on another occasion, indulge its own will.
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Government is itself an art, one of the subtlest of the arts. It is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.
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We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy that represents an element of continuity in law and is rooted in the psychological need to satisfy reasonable expectations.
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I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.
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Future lawyers should be more aware that law is not a system of abstract logic, but the web of arrangements, rooted in history but also in hopes, for promoting to a maximum the full use of a nation's resources and talents.
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The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.
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Ours is an accusatorial, and not an inquisitorial, system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth.
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It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of laws to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.
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It has not been unknown that judges persist in error to avoid giving the appearance of weakness and vacillation.
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Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.
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To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed.
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Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society.
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The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
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Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.
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To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
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Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
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No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.
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In law also the emphasis makes the song.
Felix Frankfurter