Washington University Law Review

Article Title

Response—The Honorable Lindsay G. Arthur: What Makes Judges Judge

Authors

Lindsay G. Arthur, United States District Court for the District of Minneapolis, Minnesota

Publication Title

Washington University Law Quarterly

Abstract

Judges are reasonably complex and more or less human, maybe almost as much so as other people: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?" We do not react simply to one course of indoctrination, we also have stomach aches; nor do we in splendid isolation balance equities, we also see people; nor are we concerned only with sustaining a judicial myth or finding in every decision its natural law or abiding smugly in our own superior morality: we also simply live, we also reflect our environments and our ancestors and our newspapers and all the people who talk to us and all the people who don't. For better or for worse, we cannot be dissected with a dull knife nor analyzed from a single premise. Even the best of sociological research may miss some factor of us; while sociologists are never simply blind men, neither are we simply elephants to be fully defined by the touch of our flank.

Recommended Citation

Lindsay G. Arthur, Response—The Honorable Lindsay G. Arthur: What Makes Judges Judge, 1971 Wash. U. L. Q. 359 (1971).
Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol1971/iss2/8