Page:Cardozo-Nature-Of-The-Judicial-Process.pdf/144

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ADHERENCE TO PRECEDENT

“extends only over a domain of concrete facts, very narrow and very limited. Almost always, a statute has only a single point in view. All history demonstrates that legislation intervenes only when a definite abuse has disclosed itself, through the excess of which public feeling has finally been aroused. When the legislator interposes, it is to put an end to such and such facts, very clearly determined, which have provoked his decision, And if, to reach his goal, he thinks it proper to proceed along the path of general ideas and abstract formulas, the principles that he announces have value, in his thought, only in the measure in which they are applicable to the evils which it was his effort to destroy, and to similar conditions which would tend to spring from them. As for other logical consequences to be deduced from these principles, the legislator has not suspected them; some, perhaps many, if he had foreseen, he would not have hesitated to repudiate. In consecrating them, no one can claim either to be following his will or to be bowing to his judgment. All that one does

144