Benjamin Cardozo

1
Benjamin Cardozo

• Every judge consulting his own experience must
  be conscious of times when a free exercise of
  will, directed of set purpose to the furtherance
  of the common good, determined the form and
  tendency of a rule which at that moment took its
  origin in one creative act.
• The Nature of the Judicial Process, pp. 103-4

2
Benjamin Cardozo

• We do not pick our rules of law
  full-blossomed from the trees. Every judge
  consulting his own experience must be conscious
  of times when a free exercise of will, directed
  of set purpose to the furtherance of the common
  good, determined the form and tendency of a rule
  which at that moment took its origin in one
  creative act.
• The Nature of the Judicial Process, p. 103

3
Lord Radcliffe

• I do not believe that it was ever an
  important discovery that judges are in some sense
  lawmakers. It is much more important to analyze
  the relative truth on an idea so far-reaching
  because unless the analysis is strict and its
  limitations observed, there is a real danger in
  its elaboration. We cannot run the risk of
  finding the archetypal image of the judge
  confused with the very different image of the
  legislator
• The Law and Its Compass, p. 14

4
Lord Radcliffe

• Judges will serve the public interest better
  if they keep quiet about their legislative
  functionThe judge who shows his handwill do
  more harm to general confidence in the law as a
  constant, safe in the hands of judges, than he is
  doing good to the laws credit as a set of rules
  nicely attuned to the sentiment of the day
• The Law and Its Compass, p. 11