Charles Fried Quotes
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The profession is designed to help the court by making sure that the best possible arguments - not misleading arguments, not arguments that stretch a point, not arguments that hide precedents - but that the best possible arguments are presented, ... That's the business we're in. It's very much like if you were a doctor. Do you only cure people who, when they're cured, will lead their lives as you were going to lead them?
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Animal. Our self-reflective perception, our judging and choosing, are what constitute our soul, our consciousness, our conscience (sometimes).
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If only people who are ideologically committed to a particular outcome argued to the courts, the law would be worse off.
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It is really a euphemism for asking the man, 'how are you going to decide particular cases that I care about? It is a kind of smoke screen for asking that question.
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It's a big tree, but it has ramified and exfoliated, ... would be an enormous disruption.
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The main thing that drew me to him was that he was a beautiful writer, not just the clarity but the aptness of expression.
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My impression of him, and the impressions of everyone in the office, was he is a very fine lawyer, a very hard worker, a beautiful writer and absolutely, meticulously objective.
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I think in many respects, his hold on his court in the last few years has begun to slip away.
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The capacity for judgment, to make plans, to choose one’s good, is what we share with other persons. It is what makes us persons.
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So too the growth of modern science depended on the premise of the individual’s ability to judge evidence and argument for himself, free from the authority— though not the argument and evidence—of tradition.
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We need to mark the difference between what another may offer, threaten, or refuse while respecting my liberty and what offers, threats, and refusals violate it. It is the line between my rights and the rights of another. Marking that line is liberty’s most difficult intellectual task.