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.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Justices interpret the Constitution based on their own life experiences rather than fixed historical meanings.
- In plain terms
- Judges decide cases using personal context.
- What can you take from it?
- Interpretation depends on the reader's experience.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How much personal bias enters law?
Another view
It risks inconsistent legal standards.
More from Felix Frankfurter
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Permalink to quote #7 [It is anomalous] to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.
Permalink to quote #9 Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
Permalink to quote #6
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