Legal Tolerance of Economic Power: Foreword

Abstract

IF LORD ACTON and Mr. Justice Stone ever talked together, on this earth of ours or along the celestial shore, the records present no account of it. The shops in which they did their distinctive work lay far apart, and the craft of the one was no concern of the other. The member of the English gentry was a superb historian; he was skilled in reciting the course of human events and blessed with an uncanny gift of laying bare its meaning. The Yankee from the rocky fields of Massachusetts by way of the teaching of law became a jurist. His trade was in controversies between human beings, ordinary and extraordinary, arising out of the grand and petty affairs of life. His natural gift was to suspend judgment until every relevant fact had fallen into place and the alternatives upon which decision rested had been clearly stated. Each in his own distinctive way distilled years of experience into the values which shaped judgment. Each in the fullness of time came to recognize "power" as an unruly thing which in a civilized community had to be tamed to the common good.