“Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.” — LEARNED HAND
Billings Learned Hand is probably the most influential American judge you never heard of.
Hand served for many years as chief judge of and the intellectual engine for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District in Manhattan. A philosophical pragmatist, his landmark rulings on free speech, tax law and economics are widely considered to be among the formative statements of contract and tort law.
Born in Albany, New York, 136 years ago today, Hand studied philosophy at Harvard College under William James and George Santayana, among other gurus, before receiving a degree from Harvard Law.
Hand was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President William Howard Taft in 1909 and was promoted to the Second Circuit by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, where he served for the rest of his life.
His 52 years as a federal judge is a record, and although he never was appointed to the Supreme Court, he is widely considered to have been a greater jurist than all but a few justices.
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