Daily Inspiration Quote by Learned Hand

Democracy collapses less from dramatic coups than from quiet accounting. Learned Hand frames that danger in religious language for a reason: a “commandment” isn’t a policy preference, it’s a taboo. By borrowing the cadences of the Bible, he smuggles constitutional principle into moral law, insisting that equal justice isn’t a budget line to be trimmed when times get hard or when certain people are inconvenient.

“Ration” is the knife twist. It evokes wartime scarcity, queues, coupons, triage - the moment when a society decides who gets full portions and who must make do. Hand’s warning is that governments are always tempted to treat justice the same way: expedite some cases, overlook some abuses, waive some rights, tolerate some corruption, so long as the “important” business gets done. That is precisely how democracies teach themselves to stop noticing inequality before the law.

Hand wrote and spoke in a 20th-century America that repeatedly tested civil liberties under pressure: Red Scare crackdowns, labor unrest, wartime speech restrictions, later the early Cold War. As a judge, he knew the system’s most seductive alibi is necessity. Courts can say they’re being pragmatic; legislators can say they’re prioritizing; the public can say it’s temporary. Hand’s line strips that cover away. If justice is portioned out based on fear, urgency, or status, democracy becomes a performance: elections on top, favoritism underneath. The subtext is blunt: the minute you accept unequal justice as “realistic,” you’ve already started trading democracy for order.