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THE JUDGE AS A LEGISLATOR

ou de l'insuffisance de la loi, pourra être poursuivi comme coupable de déni de justice.”[1] “It is the function of our courts,” says an acute critic, “to keep the doctrines up to date with the mores by continual restatement and by giving them a continually new content. This is judicial legislation, and the judge legislates at his peril. Nevertheless, it is the necessity and duty of such legislation that gives to judicial office its highest honor; and no brave and honest judge shirks the duty or fears the peril.”[2]

You may say that there is no assurance that judges will interpret the mores of their day more wisely and truly than other men. I am not disposed to deny this, but in my view it is quite beside the point. The point is rather that this power of interpretation must be lodged somewhere, and the custom of the constitution has lodged it in the judges. If they are to fulfill their

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  1. “The judge who shall refuse to give judgment under pretext of the silence, of the obscurity, or of the inadequacy of the law, shall be subject to prosecution as guilty of a denial of justice.”
  2. Arthur L. Corbin, 39 Yale L. J. 771.