Our Common Law Is The

It Is Of Course True That Any Kind Of Judicial Legislation Is Objectionable On The Score Of The Limited Interests Which A Court Can Represent, Yet There Are Wrongs Which In Fact Legislatures Cannot Be Brought To Take An Interest In, At Least Not Until The Courts Have Acted.

If A Community Decides That Some Conduct Is Prejudicial To Itself, And So Decides By Numbers Sufficient To Impose Its Will Upon Dissenters, I Know Of No Principle Which Can Stay Its Hand.

That Community Is Already In The Process Of Dissolution Where Each Man Begins To Eye His Neighbor As A Possible Enemy, Where Non-conformity With The Accepted Creed, Political As Well As Religious, Is A Mark Of Disaffection; Where Denunciation, Without Specification Or Backing, Takes The Place Of Evidence; Where Orthodoxy Chokes Freedom Of Dissent; Where Faith In The Eventual Supremacy Of Reason Has Become So Timid That We Dare Not Enter Our Convictions In The Open Lists, To Win Or Lose.

"i Beseech Ye In The Bowels Of Christ, Think That Ye May Be Mistaken." I Should Like To Have That Written Over The Portals Of Every Church, Every School, And Every Courthouse, And, May I Say, Of Every Legislative Body In The United States. I Should Like To Have Every Court Begin, "i Beseech Ye In The Bowels Of Christ, Think That We May Be Mistaken."

For, When All Is Said, As My Friend George Rublee Likes To Put It, The Only Success Is To Be A Success As A Person; And It Is Still Not Too Late For That.