Learned Hand Quotes
You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact or can open an ear to the cold voice of doubt.
Learned Hand, 1872-1961, Federal Judge, Quoted in WQ, August 2001
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The city he represented had, under his leadership, declared itself a nuclear-free zone, protested apartheid in front of the South African embassy in Washington, fought for rent-control during a period of soaring rents, and became known as "the Berkeley of the East":
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri statehood was considered. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri {613176} but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.
Billings Learned Hand was an American judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As of 2004 Hand had been quoted more often by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States than any other lower-court judge.
