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Decline of Stare Decisis is Due to Volume of Opinions

The Institute is recognition that the practicing lawyer as well as the legislator and the judge, share responsibility for the state of the law. In fact, our system of public justice presupposes the private law office. We speak of people's going to court. But first they go to a law office.

The Churchman Address

The most fundamental certainty about the post-war world is in some ways the most discouraging one- it will be inhabited by people, mostly by the same people who populate it now. It is their suspicions and fears and ancient hatreds and conflicts in ambition and economic interest that have wrecked previous plans of world organization.

Tribute To Country Lawyers

Judge Powell's book reminds us who come from rural backgrounds that our way of life was much the same all over America. Judge Powell and I are a generation apart, but country living changed little between his youth and mine. Its real transformation came with the automobile, the gasoline engine, the telephone, radio, electric power, and mechanization, all of which were unavailable on the farm when I was born.

Full Faith and Credit

A namesake lecture in memory of Mr. Justice Cardozo is an undertaking of more than ordinary challenge to a Justice of a succeeding generation. Even choice of a fitting subject has difficulties. One related to the work of the Court on which he and I both have served might seem appropriate. But Judge Cardozo's most significant contributions to the law are not to be found in the reports of the Supreme Court. He was preeminently a devotee of the common law, while the Supreme Court has never been distinguished as a source of common law and during his time renounced independence of judgment as to what the common law is or should be in the class of cases that most often invoked it.

Franklin Roosevelt

No other event could bow so many human heads in a common sorrow and a sense of personal loss. Throughout the land, by countless humble firesides people feel less secure today because he is gone; for, while he walked with Kings, they knew that he never lost the common touch; that he was their friend and advocate; that while he lived there would be no forgotten man. Neither sea nor land stretched far enough to get out of range of his sympathy and understanding.