I do not underrate the yearning for mechanical and formal tests. They are possible and useful in zones upon the legal sphere. The pain of choosing is… - Benjamin N. Cardozo

The reconciliation of the irreconcilable, the merger of antitheses, the synthesis of opposites, these are the great problems of the law... We have the claims of stability to be harmonized with those of progress. We are to reconcile liberty with equality, and both of them with order. The property rights of the individual we are to respect, yet we are not to press them to the point at which they threaten the welfare or the security of the many. We must preserve to justice its universal quality, and yet leave to it the capacity to be individual and particular.

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.

The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.