Jerome Frank quotes

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts. (Jerome Frank)
Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial. View quote
Jerome Frank
Every lawyer of experience comes to know (more or less unconsciously) that in the great majority of cases, the precedents are none too good as bases of prediction. Somehow or other, there are plenty of precedents to go around. View quote
Jerome Frank
The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless. View quote
Jerome Frank
To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism. View quote
Jerome Frank
To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness. View quote
Jerome Frank
One of Judge Jerome Frank's law clerks objected to the length of one of his opinions. He spent all of a week and finally cut it down from sixty-five pages to one-half page. He left both on Judge Frank's desk without comment. The following morning Judge Frank rushed into his clerk's office and shouted, 'Bully for you,' displaying the clerk's work, 'we'll add it to the end. View quote
Jerome Frank
True, no man can be wholly apart from his fellows. But, if each of us is a promontory, yet the promontory reaches out beyond the social mainland to a point where others cannot intrude. Beyond that point lies an unexplorable lonesomeness, a unique privacy. It is a no-other-man's land, for others can't penetrate it, can't communicate with it. View quote
Jerome Frank