ABSTRACT
Are judges free from the fetters described in Chapter 1? We like to think so. Law school teaches a vision of the common law as evolving toward ever-higher reaches of wisdom and flexibility. We have even higher hopes for our public, constitutional jurisprudence. Despite lofty ambitions of justice, however, our system of law has yielded many embarrassingly inhumane decisions. 1 Opinions steeped in what we later see as serious moral error come down all too frequently—at least one per generation. Every casebook has chapters devoted to doctrines or precedents that we are glad to relegate to history. And anyone who reads legal biography knows that even the most eminent Justices—Taney, Holmes, Field, Marshall—have chapters that mar their otherwise outstanding careers.
