Of that freedom [of thought and speech] one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. - Benjamin N. Cardozo

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.

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. All their lives, forces which they do not recognize and cannot name, have been tugging at them — inherited instincts, traditional beliefs, acquired convictions; and the resultant is an outlook on life, a conception of social needs. … In this mental background every problem finds it setting. We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.

The judicial process, as was said at the outset of these lectures, is a process of search and comparison, and little else.