The elaborate argument against the constitutionality of the Act if interpreted as we read it, in accordance with its obvious meaning does not need an… - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Law, being a practical thing, must found itself on actual forces. It is quite enough, therefore, for the law, that man, by an instinct which he shares with the domestic dog, and of which the seal gives a most striking example, will not allow himself to be dispossessed, either by force or fraud, of what he olds, without trying to get it back again. Philosophy may find a hundred reasons to justify the instinct, but it would be totally immaterial if it should condemn it and bid us surrender without a murmur.

The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.

The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex — not that which never has divined it.