"Though every legal task demands this skill, it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice?"
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Richardson is making a lawyerly point that’s also a quiet rebuke to the kind of policymaking that treats human beings like rounding errors. His emphasis on “this skill” (the missing noun is judgment: the ability to imagine consequences) frames law not as a puzzle of definitions but as an exercise in applied empathy. It’s telling he doesn’t romanticize it. Public policy, for him, isn’t where ideals go to shine; it’s where they go to get stress-tested by rent, illness, bureaucracy, and the ordinary frictions of living.
The line “properly responsive to human needs and predicaments” does two things at once. It asserts a moral standard (responsiveness) while admitting that predicaments are messy, situational, and often not the citizen’s fault. That word choice distances Richardson from punitive, moralizing governance. He’s less interested in whether people deserve help than whether rules will collide with reality.
Then comes the deceptively simple close: “How will the general rule work in practice?” This is the anti-slogan. It’s an insistence on implementation as the real arena of ethics. General rules are where governments hide: they sound fair, uniform, and clean. Richardson drags them back into the world where discretion is exercised, loopholes multiply, and the most vulnerable pay the “edge case” tax.
Context matters: Richardson lived through the era when federal power expanded, bureaucracy thickened, and trust in institutions took repeated hits (not least during Watergate, when he was one of the officials caught between law and politics). The subtext is a warning: legitimacy doesn’t come from elegant rules, but from rules that don’t break people when they’re applied.
The line “properly responsive to human needs and predicaments” does two things at once. It asserts a moral standard (responsiveness) while admitting that predicaments are messy, situational, and often not the citizen’s fault. That word choice distances Richardson from punitive, moralizing governance. He’s less interested in whether people deserve help than whether rules will collide with reality.
Then comes the deceptively simple close: “How will the general rule work in practice?” This is the anti-slogan. It’s an insistence on implementation as the real arena of ethics. General rules are where governments hide: they sound fair, uniform, and clean. Richardson drags them back into the world where discretion is exercised, loopholes multiply, and the most vulnerable pay the “edge case” tax.
Context matters: Richardson lived through the era when federal power expanded, bureaucracy thickened, and trust in institutions took repeated hits (not least during Watergate, when he was one of the officials caught between law and politics). The subtext is a warning: legitimacy doesn’t come from elegant rules, but from rules that don’t break people when they’re applied.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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