Justice & Law Quote by Felix Frankfurter

Frankfurter is laying down a credo of judicial restraint that doubles as a rebuke to the romantic idea of the judge as philosopher-king. The sentence is built like a self-imposed gag order: “private notions” versus “the Constitution,” desire versus duty. Even the emotional verbs do work. He “cherish[es]” his policy views, then admits he might find their rejection “mischievous” - a sly, almost paternal word that concedes consequences without claiming authority to fix them. The point isn’t that policy doesn’t matter; it’s that the courtroom is the wrong tool for winning policy arguments.

The subtext is institutional anxiety. Frankfurter wrote in an era when the Supreme Court was still haunted by the Lochner period, when judges struck down social and economic regulation by smuggling laissez-faire ideology into constitutional “liberty.” After the New Deal crisis and court-packing fight, legitimacy became the Court’s oxygen supply. Frankfurter’s line is a legitimacy play: if the public starts reading opinions as partisan preferences in robes, the Court becomes just another legislature - but without elections.

He’s also quietly drawing a bright line against the more muscular, rights-expanding constitutionalism emerging around him. Restraint here is not moral modesty so much as role morality: the judge’s job is interpretation, not correction. It’s persuasive because it admits temptation, names it, and refuses it anyway. The discipline is the argument.