It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.
The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.
The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.
To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else — these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.
To say that a thing has never yet been done among men is to erect a barrier stronger than reason, stronger than discussion.