There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.
The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
The risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed.
