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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.

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
Expectations
Satisfy
Policy
Represents
Social
Rooted
Need
Element
Important
Staring
Reasonable
Embodies
Psychological
Stare
Recognize
Continuity

More quotes by Felix Frankfurter

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The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Felix Frankfurter
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For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule.
Felix Frankfurter
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Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
Felix Frankfurter
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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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No judge writes on a wholly clean slate.
Felix Frankfurter
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The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
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Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.
Felix Frankfurter
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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.
Felix Frankfurter
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Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
Felix Frankfurter
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Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
Felix Frankfurter
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I don’t like a man to be too efficient. He’s likely to be not human enough.
Felix Frankfurter
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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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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.
Felix Frankfurter
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It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Felix Frankfurter
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It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.
Felix Frankfurter
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There is no inevitability in history except as men make it.
Felix Frankfurter
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The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we have said about it.
Felix Frankfurter
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Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
Felix Frankfurter
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It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed.
Felix Frankfurter