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Article: Predicting future Supreme Court decisions on race and the Fourth Amendment
- Article from:
- Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights
- Article date:
- October 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright University of Texas, Austin, School of Law Publications, Inc. Fall 2002. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Introduction
Oliver Wendell Holmes's theory of legal realism, which contends that written law is patently incomplete and compels wide judicial discretion in interpretation and application,1 has been called the "What the Judge Ate for Breakfast" theory of judicial decision-making.2 By emphasizing the large amount of discretion necessarily afforded to judges, Holmes's theory suggests that cases are decided based on judges' fancy. Indeed, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court (of which Holmes was a member) in "[t]he defensible intent to end the Court's frustration of the people's will,"3 the President implicitly acknowledged the great power of individual ...