A Plea for the Unprincipled Decision

Abstract

Not so very many years ago, when legislative action was rather freely negatived by the Supreme Court, the voices of liberals like Holmes called for judicial self-restraint. Since that time, a more conservative self-restraint doctrine which strictly limits the role of judicial review has gained wide support. Judge Clark argues that such adoctrine cannot be used to avoid decision-making on the ground that the issues are lacking in adequate generality to permit of impartial or "principled" decisions, because these are concepts which are too vague and ambiguous for practical use and tend merely to support conservative decision-making. In this Article he registers his plea for the "unprincipled" decision.