Irving Kaufman Quotations

The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

The Supreme Court's only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special.

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

The judge is forced for the most part to reach his audience through the medium of the press whose reporting of judicial decisions is all too often inaccurate and superficial.

Simply according artistic works the same protection as nonartistic works may not be sufficient to protect creativity. After all, the very essence of artistic expression is invention and artists necessarily draw on their own experience. But if the rules of liability are unclear, artists will not be able to know how much disguise is sufficient to protect their claims from the claims of those who may see themselves in the portrayals.

What most impresses us about great jurists is not their tenacious grasps of fine points, honed almost to invisibility; it is the moment when we are suddently aware of the sweep and direction of the law, and its place in the lives of men.

No other profession is subject to the public contempt and derision that sometimes befalls lawyers. the bitter fruit of public incomprehension of the law itself and its dynamics.

The trial lawyer does what Socrates was executed for: making the worse argument appear the stronger.

The ideal is to have the losing party feel that he is not the victim of the judge, but simply the object of a profession that is the same for all.