"At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections"
About this Quote
Douglas is puncturing the courtly fiction that judges are basically calculators in robes. By locating decision-making at the "constitutional level", he isn’t talking about dinner-table opinions; he’s talking about the most sanctified arena of American authority, where outcomes get baptized as neutral principle. The provocation is blunt: in the cases that define rights, power, and the shape of public life, the engine is feeling first, justification second.
The line works because it flips the prestige hierarchy. "Rational" is demoted to a press secretary for the psyche, drafting memos after the real vote has already happened. "Predilections" is the tell: not ideals, not reasoning, but inclinations - personal, cultural, classed, often unconscious. Douglas isn’t merely confessing human weakness; he’s accusing institutions of laundering temperament into doctrine. In that light, legal opinions read less like discoveries of truth than like sophisticated narratives designed to make a result look inevitable.
Context matters. Douglas served through the New Deal settlement, World War II, the Red Scare, and the early civil rights era - decades when constitutional interpretation was openly contested terrain, not a settled science. His own libertarian streak on speech and privacy made him keenly aware that what counts as "reasonable" often tracks whose fears are being centered. The subtext is a warning: if we pretend law is pure logic, we stop scrutinizing the values and anxieties smuggled in under the banner of principle.
The line works because it flips the prestige hierarchy. "Rational" is demoted to a press secretary for the psyche, drafting memos after the real vote has already happened. "Predilections" is the tell: not ideals, not reasoning, but inclinations - personal, cultural, classed, often unconscious. Douglas isn’t merely confessing human weakness; he’s accusing institutions of laundering temperament into doctrine. In that light, legal opinions read less like discoveries of truth than like sophisticated narratives designed to make a result look inevitable.
Context matters. Douglas served through the New Deal settlement, World War II, the Red Scare, and the early civil rights era - decades when constitutional interpretation was openly contested terrain, not a settled science. His own libertarian streak on speech and privacy made him keenly aware that what counts as "reasonable" often tracks whose fears are being centered. The subtext is a warning: if we pretend law is pure logic, we stop scrutinizing the values and anxieties smuggled in under the banner of principle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
