8 Quotes by Joel P. Trachtman

You might say that those who seek change must show that something is indeed “broken.

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the expression of the institutionalized medium of reason, that’s all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, unprincipled, undisciplined feeling.” Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1962.

The art of reasoned persuasion is an iterative, recursive heuristic, meaning that we must go back and forth between the facts and the rules until we have a good fit. We cannot see the facts properly until we know what framework to place them into, and we cannot determine what framework to place them into until we see the basic contours of the facts. The great economist Friedrich Hayek said, “Without a theory, the facts are silent.

Don’t try arguing to someone to whom you are romantically attracted that you have a right to their reciprocal affection, or that they bear the burden of proving that you are not attractive to them.

Law, like taxes in the words of the great judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the price of civilization.

Although a legal system is rooted in the values of its society, it also has an independent dynamic, with principles, language, and rules of its own.

The true stronger argument is the argument that meets some objective test of strength, and that should win.

Legal practice is, to a great extent, ethically ambivalent. Lawyers pledge to represent their clients zealously, and so they are charged, where their client is wrong, with trying to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. Yet, they also see themselves as officers of the court, or agents of the state, and in that role they should seek to enforce the law as intended and must act honestly.