Court Opinion

ID: 9446896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:20:42.96046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:49.133008
License: Public Domain

*460HUTCHESON, Chief Judge
(concurring specially).
} I concur fully in what is said and held, and the way in which it is said and held, in the majority opinion, including the use made of footnote 12, which our dissenting brother does not like, and, but ior his animadversions and admonitions ■evoked by what he regards as our obdurate refusal to follow the teachings of his ■dissenting opinion in Lincoln Mills of Alabama v. Textile Workers, 5 Cir., 230 F.2d 81, 89, 92, I should be content. Since, however, apparently on the basis of the success in the Supreme Court of his dissenting opinion in the Lincoln Mills case, he has in this opinion set himself up as general critic and censor of the court in the field of arbitration, I feel it my right and duty, as one who was not in the Lincoln Mills case and whose withers are therefore unwrung by it, to speak up. Deprecating the ebullient enthusiasm of my younger brother as pioneer, teacher and guide in the role of judicial activist, which he seems to have assumed, I venture to suggest to him that before taking too seriously his role of leader in our court of an activist movement to deride and destroy the ancient landmarks of the law, he take a little time off to read and reflect upon these words from one of the great English legal historians:
“Philosophical speculation about law and politics is an attractive pursuit. A small knowledge of the rules of law, a sympathy with hardships which have been observed and a little ingenuity, are sufficient to make a very pretty theory. It is a harder task to become a master of Anglo-American law by using the history of that law to discover the principles which underlie its rules, and to elucidate the manner in which these principles have been developed and adapted to meet the infinite complexities of life in different ages. Such students of our law will learn even though at second hand, something of the practical wisdom which comes from knowledge of affairs. They will for that reason be able to suggest solutions of present problems which will depend not merely on their own unaided genius, but on the accumulated wisdom of the past.” Holdsworth, Some Lessons from Our Legal History, 105.