title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The "Pac is Back" theme song features sound effects and melodies from the original arcade game, and other pieces of music from older Pac-Man games are remixed and used in the show. Some action sequences feature a remix of "Pac-Man's Park" from Pac-Mania (Which itself is based of the cutscene theme from the original Pac-Man arcade game). This remix also featured in the mobile game Pac-Man Dash!.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: Meanwhile, the Japanese dub of the show has a different theme song named "PAC THIS WORLD!!!" by Kenichi Maeyamada, (aka, Hyadain)


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The series was tentatively called "Pac-Man 3D" and later "Pac-Man: The Adventure Begins". On September 26, 2011, 41 Entertainment was named worldwide distributor for the series and that the series would be finished for a Fall 2013 window.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: 41 Entertainment signed many deals for merchandising, including a fast food deal with Burger King, a building toy license with K'nex excluding Japan,


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On February 29, 2012, 41 named Disney XD as the US broadcaster for the series. The series debuted on June 15, 2013, and aired on the network until 2016.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On July 1, 2017, reruns of the series began broadcasting on the KidsClick block as one of its launch programmes, and aired on the block until it's discontinuation in March 2019.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On July 7, 2019, Discovery Family picked up rights to several of 41 Entertainment's shows, including "Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures". The show premiered on the channel on November 16, 2019.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The series premiered on April 5, 2014, on Tokyo MX and BS11 in Japan, and is being produced by Avi Arad.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The series premiered on March 17, 2014, on Disney XD Canada, and was retained following the network's rebrand as Family Chargd on October 9, 2015.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On June 26, 2012, British Sky Broadcasting acquired the 2D and 3D broadcast rights for the series in the United Kingdom. On November 15, 2013, the 2D rights transitioned from Sky to Disney XD and later premiered on the network on January 11, 2014. Sky 3D would air the series within the same time as well.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On February 7, 2013, Clan and Canal Panda picked up the free and pay-TV rights to the series in Spain for a summer 2013 window on the latter and a January 2014 window for the former. The series premiered on Clan on January 16, 2014.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On September 10, 2013, Gulli and Canal J picked up the free and pay-TV rights to the series in France for a Fall 2013 window.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On November 15, 2013, 41 granted Disney EMEA various TV rights for the series. Disney XD acquired the Pay-TV rights for Series 1 in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Nordic territories with an option for the second series if needed, while Disney XD and Disney Channel acquired the pay and free-TV rights to both seasons in Germany.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: In the Philippines, it aired on Disney Channel on March 3 and ended on October 30, 2014, to give way for the special programming of "Monstober". It returned to air on March 2, 2015.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On October 5, 2015, the series premiered on Discovery Kids in Latin America (except Brazil, which aired on Gloob instead).


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On February 7, 2013, 41 Entertainment appointed Phase 4 Films as North American Home Entertainment distributor for the series.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The first release - "The Adventure Begins" was released on January 7, 2014, and solely contained the first episode of the series.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: These releases were followed on with volumed DVDs containing four episodes each: "Pac is Back!" (Released in January 2014), "All You Can Eat" (Released in January 2014), "Ghost Patrol" (Released in March 2014), "Let the Games Begin", and "A Berry Scary Night" (Released in September 2014), "Jurassic Pac", "Movie 4-Pac" and a collection containing four or eight DVDs were also followed up.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: There were also two DVDs each with three episodes that was released exclusively to Redbox: "Indiana Pac and the Temple of Slime", and "Mission Impacable!". An additional release: "Pac to the Future", was exclusively sold at Redbox Canada.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: There have been two DVD releases in Australia. These were released in Australia on October 2, 2013. The current releases in Australia are:


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: On May 1, 2014, 41 Entertainment named Universal Studios Home Entertainment as the distributor for the series in the country.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: The first six volumes were released on October 10, 2014., with volumes seven and eight releasing on March 15, 2015. Each DVD contained two episodes from the series with only German audio.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: Several video games based on the show have been developed. An endless runner for iOS and Android titled "Pac-Man Dash!" was released in July 2013. This is also hosted for free in Canada on the CHRGD website. In 2017, "Pac-Man Dash!" was discontinued and removed from digital storefronts.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: A 3D platformer with the same name as the TV series was released for Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC in late 2013, accompanied by a 2D platformer for the Nintendo 3DS shortly after. A sequel was released in October 2014. Characters from the show have also appeared in the compilation release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC, titled "Pac-Man Museum". The compilation was delisted in 2020.


title: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

text: Although the show's Pac-Man design was the standard at the time, Pac-Man's original design would appear in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U instead. Super Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai stated that he preferred the original design of Pac-Man over the design seen in The Ghostly Adventures, and would have considered dropping him from the game if Bandai Namco didn't let him use the classic design.


title: Black house spider

text: The black house spider or common black spider ("Badumna insignis") is a common species of cribellate Australian spider, introduced to New Zealand and Japan. A closely related species, "Badumna longinqua", the grey house spider, has a similar distribution, but has also been introduced to the Americas.


title: Black house spider

text: "B. insignis" is a dark, robust spider. The female grows up to 18 mm, with a 30 mm legspan. As with most spiders, the males are smaller (10 mm), and have longer legs in relation to their body size. In both sexes the carapace and legs are dark brown to black, and the abdomen is charcoal grey with a dorsal pattern of light markings (sometimes indistinct) and a dense covering of fine, velvety hair. "B. longinqua" is slightly bigger (14 mm) with a greyish carapace and black-brown legs.


title: Black house spider

text: The web of "B. insignis" is a messy-looking construct of irregular sail-like shapes. There is a funnel-shaped, silken retreat, usually in the middle or corner of the web, where the spider spends most of its time waiting for prey. The female spider never leaves the web unless forced to. They seem quite attached to their location, rarely changing the position of their webs and because of this, old webs can be quite messy, often with small objects or dust stuck in them. At night the spider comes out to repair and add to the web, often just adding new silk over the old. Males, when ready to mate, go in search of females. The male plucks the web of the female to attract her attention. Once the male has made sure that the female will be receptive, he will approach and inseminate her with his palps. They may then stay together for several days, and may mate again several times.


title: Black house spider

text: The female constructs several white silk egg sacs, which are secured within the web retreat. The female stays with the eggs until they hatch. The spiderlings then disperse. Occasionally the young spiders stay in the web of the mother for some time, catching the smaller prey that the larger spider would ignore.


title: Black house spider

text: Black house spiders are venomous, but are not considered dangerous. They are timid and bites from them are infrequent. The bite may be excruciatingly painful and cause local swelling. Symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, sweating and giddiness are occasionally recorded. In a few cases, skin lesions (arachnogenic necrosis) have developed after multiple bites.


title: Black house spider

text: "B. insignis" is native to Australia, but has been introduced to New Zealand and Japan. It is widely distributed throughout Australia and New Zealand. In natural habitat, they are usually found on rough-barked trees, whereas inside buildings they are often found in corners, around windows and doorways, or where other light sources may attract prey insects. The related "B. longinqua" may be found in similar locations, but is more often found outdoors.


title: Thunderheart

text: Thunderheart is a 1992 American Neo-Western mystery film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by John Fusco. The film is a loosely based fictional portrayal of events relating to the Wounded Knee incident in 1973, when followers of the American Indian Movement seized the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee in protest against federal government policy regarding Native Americans. Incorporated in the plot is the character of Ray Levoi, played by actor Val Kilmer, as an FBI agent with Sioux heritage investigating a homicide on a Native American reservation. Sam Shepard, Graham Greene, Fred Ward and Sheila Tousey star in principal supporting roles. Also in 1992, Apted had previously directed a documentary surrounding a Native American activist episode involving the murder of FBI agents titled "Incident at Oglala". The documentary depicts the indictment of activist Leonard Peltier during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.


title: Thunderheart

text: The film was a co-production between the motion picture studios of TriStar Pictures, Tribeca Productions, and Waterhorse Productions. It was commercially distributed by TriStar Pictures theatrically, and by Columbia TriStar Home Video for home media. "Thunderheart" explores civil topics, such as discrimination, political activism and murder. Following its cinematic release, the film garnered several award nominations from the Political Film Society. On November 24, 1992, the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released by the Intrada Records label. The film score was composed by musician James Horner.


title: Thunderheart

text: "Thunderheart" premiered in theaters in-wide release in the United States on April 3, 1992 grossing $22,660,758 in domestic ticket sales. The film was considered a minor financial success after its theatrical run, and was met with generally positive critical reviews before its initial screening in cinemas.


title: Thunderheart

text: Leo Fast Elk, a tribal council member of a Native American reservation in South Dakota, is murdered. FBI Agent William Dawes assigns Agent Ray Levoi to help investigate. The latter is chosen for his mixed Sioux heritage, which might assist in the inquiry as they interview residents of the reservation. Ray is apprehensive as he is disconnected from his heritage and does not speak Lakota. Ray is partnered with veteran Agent Frank "Cooch" Coutelle, who has narrowed down the suspect list to Maggie Eagle Bear, a peaceful Native American political activist and schoolteacher, and Jimmy Looks Twice, leader of the radical Aboriginal Rights Movement (ARM).


title: Thunderheart

text: Ray and Frank meet tribal police officer Walter Crow Horse at the murder scene. Walter is resistant to their claims of jurisdiction as he generally distrusts the government, and Ray and Frank tell him not to impede their investigation. Frank has already determined that Jimmy Looks Twice is the prime suspect and has been working with tribal council president Jack Milton to apprehend him. Jack has hired an unofficial militia to protect the reservation from Jimmy and the ARM, who oppose the tribal council's efforts to modernize the reservation. Jimmy is successfully caught and taken into custody, but escapes after a gunfight with the FBI and tribal police.


title: Thunderheart

text: When Walter informs him that the murder took place on Maggie's property, Ray goes to collect evidence and finds bullet casings but is told to leave by Maggie. Ray is initially mocked and ridiculed by the locals (being called a "Washington Redskin"), but tribal elder Grandpa Sam Reaches tells him that he comes from strong Native American blood. Ray returns to Maggie's to question her grandmother, and commends her for her activism. While Ray is visiting, Maggie's son is shot in the arm by Jack's militia, who claim the shooting was actually committed by the ARM. Ray drives Maggie and her son to the hospital, and gets into a fight with Jack's men when they arrive. After witnessing the harrowing conditions and violence from Milton's pro-government faction on the reservation, Ray gradually becomes sensitized to Native American issues.


title: Thunderheart

text: Although Frank is convinced that Jimmy committed the murder, Walter tells Ray that the killer was heavier than Jimmy is and also stole Leo's car, which was used to take the body from Maggie's property to the dump site. Leo's car is still missing, but Frank dismisses the lead and tells Ray to focus on locating Jimmy instead of talking to Walter. Ray continues to meet with Walter and Grandpa Sam Reaches despite Frank's orders and starts his own investigation off the record. Leo's car is found with a large jacket in the trunk, supporting Walter's claim that the killer was bigger than Jimmy is. Ray surreptitiously takes a raffle ticket stub from the jacket pocket and takes it to Maggie, who organized the raffle, to see if she can identify who it belongs to. Maggie informs Ray that she is concerned about the possibility of contaminated water on the reservation, and thanks him for his help with her son.


title: Thunderheart

text: Ray visits Grandpa Sam Reaches and finds Jimmy, who he is now convinced is innocent. Ray warns Jimmy to leave quickly or the FBI will kill him, but Jimmy is apprehended by Frank and the rest of the FBI agents who were called in for the manhunt. Much to Frank's anger, Ray comes to suspect a conspiracy and cover-up involving the reservation and Leo's murder. After Jimmy is arrested, Maggie matches the ticket stub for Ray. The ticket was purchased by Richard Yellow Hawk, a wheelchair-bound convict on the reservation. Ray visits Richard, who admits to killing Leo after Ray tells him to get out of his wheelchair, which he does. Richard confirms that Frank and other FBI agents visited him in prison, offering to reduce his sentence if he did favors for them. Richard stirred up tensions between the ARM and the tribal council, and was effectively blackmailed by Frank under the threat of going back to prison.


title: Thunderheart

text: After being told to find 'the source', Ray and Walter travel to Red Deer Table, a location that Leo was investigating prior to his death. Ray tells Walter about a dream he had about the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which he was running with other Native Americans from US soldiers. Walter states that Ray had a vision, and that Ray is "Thunderheart", a Native American hero slain at Wounded Knee, who is now reincarnated to deliver them from their current troubles. After arriving at Red Deer Table, the pair come across a government-sponsored plan to strip mine uranium on the reservation. The mining is polluting the water supply and fueling the bloody conflict between the reservation's anti-government ARM and Milton's men. While the land is not owned by Milton, he receives kickbacks from the leases. Ray and Crow Horse discover Maggie's body at the site. Ray rushes back to Richard, but finds him dead in his wheelchair, his wrists slit to make his death look like a suicide.


title: Thunderheart

text: Walter and Ray are pursued by Frank, Jack, and his pro-government collaborators. Ray reveals that he recorded Richard's confession, implicating Frank in Leo's murder. Ray and Walter are eventually cornered but before they can be killed, the ARM shows up to protect them. Frank and Jack are apprehended after being cornered and outnumbered by the armed resistance. Ray, disillusioned by the corruption, leaves the FBI.


title: Thunderheart

text: The film was shot primarily on location in South Dakota. Specific sets included the Pine Ridge Reservation, which was dubbed the "Bear Creek Reservation". Other filming locations used were in the Washington, D.C. area for the opening sequences. The film employed many Indian actors, some of whose screen roles mirror their real lives. The actor John Trudell, who played an Indian activist suspected of murder in the film inspired by the real-life events surrounding Leonard Peltier, is in fact an Indian activist, as well as a poet and singer. Chief Ted Thin Elk, who played an honored Lakota medicine man, was a Lakota elder himself. Badlands National Park and Wounded Knee in South Dakota were also used as backdrop locations for the real-life incidents which took place during the 1970s. Filming was done with the support of the Oglala Sioux people, who trusted Apted and Fusco to express their story.


title: Thunderheart

text: The original motion picture soundtrack for "Thunderheart" was released by the Intrada Records music label on November 24, 1992. The score for the film was composed by James Horner, while original songs written by musical artists Bruce Springsteen, Ali Olmo, and Sonny Lemaire, among others, were used in-between dialogue shots throughout the film. Jim Henrikson edited the film's music.


title: Thunderheart

text: A paperback novel published by HarperCollins titled "Thunderheart" based on John Fusco's screenplay, was released on May 28, 1992. The book dramatizes the fictionalized events of the Wounded Knee Incident, as depicted in the film. It expands on the ideas of how an FBI agent's assignment to uncover the truth behind violence on an Indian reservation leads to a wide-range conspiracy.


title: Thunderheart

text: Rotten Tomatoes reported that 89% of 18 sampled critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 6.47 out of 10. Following its cinematic release in 1992, "Thunderheart" received two nominations from the Political Film Society Awards in the categories of Exposé and Human Rights.


title: Thunderheart

text: Chris Hicks, of the "Deseret News", said screenwriter Fusco and director Apted created a "rich backdrop, with fascinating character development and a serious focus on the spirituality of Indian beliefs." He commented that "there's a lot more going on in "Thunderheart" that makes it well worth the trip—not the least of which is the performance of co-star Graham Greene, fresh from his Oscar-nominated "Dances With Wolves" triumph, wonderful as a wise-cracking American Indian cop." In a mixed review, "Variety" believed the film found "a lively platform for its essential view that the old ways were far wiser and better." However, they noted that actor Kilmer "holds the screen strongly in an intense young Turk role, but when script calls for him to transform into a mythical Indian savior, he doesn't quite fill the moccasins." Roger Ebert in the "Chicago Sun-Times" offered a positive review recalling how he thought "what's most absorbing about "Thunderheart" is its sense of place and time. Apted makes documentaries as well as fiction films, and in such features as "Coal Miner's Daughter" and "Gorillas in the Mist" and such documentaries as "35 Up" he pays great attention to the people themselves - not just what they do, and how that pushes things along."


title: Thunderheart

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" said the film had "the shape of a thriller" and a "documentary's attentiveness to detail". She also said that the "film's outstanding performance comes from Graham Greene, an Oscar nominee for "Dances with Wolves", a film that looks like an utter confection beside this plainer, harder-hitting drama... Mr. Greene proves himself a naturally magnetic actor who deserves to be seen in other, more varied roles." Critic Kathleen Maher for "The Austin Chronicle" viewed "Thunderheart" as an "element of misty romanticism about Native Americans that Apted just doesn't manage to pull off. His yarn, however, is a good one even if it could be told a little better." However, she added that "Apted manages to say a lot by cutting between the squalor of life on the reservation to the magnificence of the land around it. Unfortunately, when the characters speak for themselves, they are often forced to deliver lines that are unspeakable." Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a "C" rating calling it "hokey" and "laborious". He viewed the film as a "leftover 1970s conspiracy thriller were it not for the novelty of its setting: a modern Indian reservation—which, as the movie reveals, is by now a fancy word for slum." He did however compliment actor Greene, calling his performance—the film's "one redeeming feature". Author C.M. of "Time Out" said that "Apted and cinematographer Roger Deakins focus unblinkingly on the poverty endemic to the reservation. This directness, however, contrasts with an over-complicated script by John Fusco." But he acknowledged that "the story boasts integrity and serves as a forceful indictment of on-going injustice."


title: Thunderheart

text: Sean Axmaker of "Turner Classic Movies" boasted on the film's merits by declaring, ""Thunderheart" dispenses with clichés of Indian culture while respectfully showing the traditions kept alive on the reservation and exposing conditions on the reservation, all within the conventions of an entertaining and involving Hollywood murder mystery with a message." Rating "3 Stars", Leonard Maltin wrote that the film was an "engrossing thriller" that is "notable for its keen attention to detail regarding Sioux customs and spirituality, and its enlightened point of view."


title: Thunderheart

text: The film premiered in cinemas on April 3, 1992 in wide release throughout the U.S.. During its opening weekend, the film opened in 5th place grossing $4,507,425 in business showing at 1,035 locations. The film "White Men Can't Jump" came in first place during that weekend grossing $10,188,583. The film's revenue dropped by 26% in its second week of release, earning $3,324,500. For that particular weekend, the film fell to 8th place screening in 1,090 theaters. The film "Sleepwalkers" unseated "White Men Can't Jump" to open in first place grossing $10,017,354 in box office revenue. During its final weekend in release, "Thunderheart" opened in a distant 14th place with $1,111,110 in revenue. The film went on to top out domestically at $22,660,758 in total ticket sales through a six-week theatrical run. For 1992 as a whole, the film would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 55.


title: Thunderheart

text: Following its theatrical release, the film was released on VHS video format on July 8, 1994. The Region 1 Code widescreen edition of the film was released on DVD in the United States on September 29, 1998. Currently, there is no scheduled release date set for a future Blu-ray Disc version of the film, although it is available in other media formats such as video on demand.


title: Thunderheart

text: Claypoole, Antoinette Nora. (2013) Ghost Rider Roads: Inside the American Indian Movement Wild Embers Press ASIN 1475048580


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In religion, transcendence is the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience, transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence, and by some definitions, has also become independent of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal "visions".


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: It is affirmed in various religious traditions' concept of the divine, which contrasts with the notion of a god (or, the Absolute) that exists exclusively in the physical order (immanentism), or is indistinguishable from it (pantheism). Transcendence can be attributed to the divine not only in its being, but also in its knowledge. Thus, a god may transcend both the universe and knowledge (is beyond the grasp of the human mind).


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some theologians and metaphysicians of various religious traditions affirm that a god is both within and beyond the universe (panentheism); in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Jewish theologians, especially since the Middle Ages, have described the transcendence of God in terms of divine simplicity, explaining the traditional characteristics of God as omniscient and omnipotent. Interventions of divine transcendence occur in the form of events outside the realm of natural occurrence such as miracles and the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In Jewish Kabbalistic cosmology, God is described as the "Ein Sof" (literally, without end) as reference to God's divine simplicity and essential unknowability. The emanation of creation from the Ein Sof is explained through a process of filtering. In the Kabbalistic creation myth referred to as the "breaking of the vessels," filtering was necessary because otherwise this intense, simple essence would have overwhelmed and made impossible the emergence of any distinct creations. Each filter, described as a vessel, captured the emanation of this creative force until it was overwhelmed and broken by the intensity of God's simple essence. Once broken, the vessel's shards, full of absorbed "divine sparks," fell into a vessel below. This process ultimately continued until the "light" of Godliness was sufficiently reduced to allow the world we inhabit to be sustained without breaking. The creation of this world, however, comes with the consequence that Godly transcendence is hidden, or "exiled" (from the immanent world). Only through the revelation of sparks hidden within the shards embedded in our material world can this transcendence be recognized again. In Hasidic thought, divine sparks are revealed through the performance of commandments or "mitzvot," (literally, the obligations and prohibitions described in the Torah). A Kabbalistic explanation for the existence of malevolence in the world is that such terrible things are possible with the divine sparks being hidden. Thus there is some urgency to performing mitzvot in order to liberate the hidden sparks and perform a "tikkun olam" (literally, healing of the world). Until then, the world is presided over by the immanent aspect of God, often referred to as the Shekhinah or divine spirit, and in feminine terms.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: The Catholic Church, as do other Christian Churches, holds that God transcends all creation. According to Aquinas, "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him." Anthropomorphic depictions of God are largely metaphorical and reflect the challenge of "human modes of expression" in attempting to describe the infinite. St. Augustine observed "...[I]t is only by the use of such human expressions that Scripture can make its many kinds of readers whom it wants to help to feel, as it were, at home." The "sense of transcendence" and therefore, an awareness of the "sacred", is an important component of the liturgy. God is recognized as both transcendent and immanent.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: "Tawhid" is the act of believing and affirming that God (Arabic: Allah) is one and unique ("wāḥid"). The Qur'an asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world; a unique and indivisible being who is independent of the entire creation. According to the Qur'an, as mentioned in Surat al-Ikhlas:


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: According to Vincent J. Cornell, the Qur'an also provides a monist image of God by describing the reality as a unified whole, with God being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all existing things: "God is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; God is the Knower of everything." [Qur'an 57:3] All Muslims have however vigorously criticized interpretations that would lead to a monist view of God for what they see as blurring the distinction between the creator and the creature, and its incompatibility with the radical monotheism of Islam.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In order to explain the complexity of unity of God and of the divine nature, the Qur'an uses 99 terms referred to as "Most Beautiful Names of Allah" (Sura 7:180)[12]. Aside from the supreme name "Allah" and the neologism al-Rahman (referring to the divine beneficence that constantly (re)creates, maintains and destroys the universe), other names may be shared by both God and human beings. According to the Islamic teachings, the latter is meant to serve as a reminder of God's immanence rather than being a sign of one's divinity or alternatively imposing a limitation on God's transcendent nature.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Tawhid or Oneness of God constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession. To attribute divinity to a created entity is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: The Baháʼí Faith believes in a single, imperishable god, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. In the Baháʼí tradition, god is described as "a personal god, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and almighty." Though inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of his creation, with a mind, will, and purpose. Baháʼís believe that God expresses this will at all times and in many ways, including through a series of divine messengers referred to as Manifestations of God or sometimes "divine educators". In expressing God's intent, these manifestations are seen to establish religion in the world. Baháʼí teachings state that God is too great for humans to fully comprehend, nor to create a complete and accurate image.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In Buddhism, "transcendence", by definition, belongs to the mortal beings of the formless realms of existence. However, although such beings are at 'the peak' of Samsara, Buddhism considers the development of transcendence to be both temporary and a spiritual cul-de-sac which, therefore, does not eventuate a permanent cessation of Samsara. This assertion was a primary differentiator from the other Sramana teachers during Gautama Buddha's own training and development.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Alternatively, in the various forms of Buddhism—Theravada, Mahayana (especially Pure Land and Zen) and Vajrayana—the notion of transcendence sometimes includes a soteriological application. Except for Pure Land and Vajrayana, the role played by transcendent beings is minimal and at most a temporary expedient. However some Buddhists believe that Nirvana is an eternal, transcendental state beyond name and form, so for these Buddhists, Nirvana is the main concept of transcendence. The more usual interpretation of Nirvana in Buddhism is that it is a cessation—a permanent absence of something (namely suffering), and therefore it is not in any way a state which could be considered transcendent.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Primordial enlightenment and the dharma are sometimes portrayed as transcendent, since they can surpass all samsaric obstructions.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Transcendence is described and viewed from a number of diverse perspectives in Hinduism. Some traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, view transcendence in the form of God as the Nirguna Brahman (God without attributes), transcendence being absolute. Other traditions, such as Bhakti yoga, view transcendence as God with attributes (Saguna Brahman), the Absolute being a personal deity (Ishvara), such as Vishnu or Shiva.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In the Bhagavad Gita transcendence is described as a level of spiritual attainment, or state of being which is open to all spiritual aspirants (the goal of yoga practice), the state at which one is no longer under the control of animalistic, base desires and is aware of a higher spiritual reality.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: The exact nature of this transcendence is given as being "above the modes of material nature", which are known as "gunas" (ropes) which bind the living entity to the world of "samsara" (repeated rebirth) in Hindu philosophy.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Waheguru (, "") is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God, the Supreme Being or the creator of all. It means "Wonderful Teacher" in the Punjabi language, but in this case is used to refer to the Sikh God. "Wahi" means "wonderful" (a Middle Persian borrowing) and "Guru" () is a term denoting "teacher". Waheguru is also described by some as an experience of ecstasy which is beyond all descriptions.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Cumulatively, the name implies wonder at the Divine Light eliminating spiritual darkness. It might also imply, "Hail the Lord whose name eliminates spiritual darkness." Earlier, Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh, "Sikhan di Bhagat Mala", gave a similar explication, also on the authority of Guru Nanak. Considering the two constituents of "Vahiguru" ("vahi" + "guru") implying the state of wondrous ecstasy and offering of homage to the Lord, the first one was brought distinctly and prominently into the devotional system by Guru Nanak, who has made use of this interjection, as in Majh ki Var (stanza 24), and Suhi ki Var, sloka to pauri 10.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Sikh doctrine identifies one panentheistic god (Ek Onkar) who is omnipresent and has infinite qualities, whose name is true (Satnam), can do anything (Karta purkh), has no fear (Nirb hau), is not the enemy of anyone (Nirvair), is beyond time (Akaal), has no image (Murat), is beyond birth and death circulation (Ajunee), is self-existent (Sai Bhang) and possesses the grace of word guru (eternal light) we can meet him (Gurprasaad). Sikhs do not identify a gender for Ek Onkar, nor do they believe it takes a human form. In the Sikh tradition, all human beings are considered equal regardless of their religion, sex, or race. All are sons and daughters of Waheguru, the Almighty.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: In 1961, Christian theologian Gabriel Vahanian's published "The Death of God". Vahanian argued that modern secular culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose or sense of providence. He concluded that for the modern secular mind "God is dead", but he did not mean that God did not exist. In Vahanian's vision a transformed post-Christian and post-modern culture was needed to create a renewed experience of deity.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Paul Van Buren and William Hamilton both agreed that the concept of transcendence had lost any meaningful place in modern secular thought. According to the norms of contemporary modern secular thought, God is dead. In responding to this denial of transcendence Van Buren and Hamilton offered secular people the option of Jesus as the model human who acted in love. The encounter with the Christ of faith would be open in a church-community.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Thomas J. J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake, Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a form of poetry in which the immanence (presence) of God could be encountered in faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the possibility of affirming his belief in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. It is important that such ideas are understood as socio-cultural developments and not as ontological realities. As Vahanian expressed it in his book, the issue of the denial of God lies in the mind of secular man, not in reality.


title: Transcendence (religion)

text: Critiquing the death of God theology, Joseph Papin, the founder of the Villanova Theology Institute, noted: "Rumbles of the new theology of the 'Requiem for God," (theologians of the death of God) proved to be a totally inadequate foundation for spanning a theological river with a bridge. The school of the theology of the "Requiem of God," not even implementing a "Requiem for Satan," will constitute only a footnote to the history of theology. . . . 'The Grave of God,' was the death rattle for the continuancy of the aforementioned school without any noticeable echo." Professor Piet Schoonenberg (Nijmegen, Netherlands) directly critiqued Altizer concluding: "Rightly understood the transcendence of God does not exclude His immanence, but includes it." Schoonenberg went on to say: "We must take God's transcendence seriously by not imposing any limits whatsoever, not even the limits that our images or concepts of transcendence evoke. This however occurs when God's transcendence is expressed as elevated over the world to the exclusion of his presence in this world; when his independence is expressed by excluding his real relation and reaction to the world; or when we insist upon his unchangeable eternity to the exclusion of his real partnership in human history."


title: Learned Hand

text: Billings Learned Hand ( ; January 27, 1872 – August 18, 1961) was an American jurist, lawyer, and judicial philosopher. He served as a federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1909 to 1924 and as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1924 to 1951.


title: Learned Hand

text: Born and raised in Albany, New York, Hand majored in philosophy at Harvard College and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. After a relatively undistinguished career as a lawyer in Albany and New York City, he was appointed at the age of 37 as a federal district judge in Manhattan in 1909. The profession suited his detached and open-minded temperament, and his decisions soon won him a reputation for craftsmanship and authority. Between 1909 and 1914, under the influence of Herbert Croly's social theories, Hand supported New Nationalism. He ran unsuccessfully as the Progressive Party's candidate for chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals in 1913, but withdrew from active politics shortly afterwards. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge elevated Hand to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which he went on to lead as the senior circuit judge (later retitled chief judge) from 1939 until his semi-retirement in 1951. Scholars have recognized the Second Circuit under Hand as one of the finest appeals courts in American history. Friends and admirers often lobbied for Hand's promotion to the Supreme Court, but circumstances and his political past conspired against his appointment.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand possessed a gift for the English language, and his writings are admired as legal literature. He rose to fame outside the legal profession in 1944 during World War II after giving a short address in Central Park that struck a popular chord in its appeal for tolerance. During a period when a hysterical fear of subversion divided the nation, Hand was viewed as a liberal defender of civil liberties. A collection of Hand's papers and addresses, published in 1952 as "The Spirit of Liberty", sold well and won him new admirers. Even after he criticized the civil-rights activism of the Warren Court, Hand retained his popularity.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand is also remembered as a pioneer of modern approaches to statutory interpretation. His decisions in specialist fields, such as patents, torts, admiralty law, and antitrust law, set lasting standards for craftsmanship and clarity. On constitutional matters, he was both a political progressive and an advocate of judicial restraint. He believed in the protection of free speech and in bold legislation to address social and economic problems. He argued that the United States Constitution does not empower courts to overrule the legislation of elected bodies, except in extreme circumstances. Instead, he advocated the "combination of toleration and imagination that to me is the epitome of all good government". , Hand had been quoted more often by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States than any other lower-court judge.


title: Learned Hand

text: Billings Learned Hand was born on January 27, 1872, in Albany, New York, the second and last child of Samuel Hand (1833–1886) and Lydia Hand (née Learned). His mother's family traditionally used surnames as given names; and Hand was named for a maternal uncle and a grandfather, both named Billings Peck Learned. The Hands were a prominent family with a tradition of activism in the Democratic Party. Hand grew up in comfortable circumstances. The family had an "almost hereditary" attachment to the legal profession and has been described as "the most distinguished legal family in northern New York".


title: Learned Hand

text: Samuel Hand was an appellate lawyer, who had risen rapidly through the ranks of an Albany-based law firm in the 1860s and, by age 32, was the firm's leading lawyer. In 1878, he became the leader of the appellate bar and argued cases before the New York Court of Appeals in "greater number and importance than those argued by any other lawyer in New York during the same period". Samuel Hand was a distant, intimidating figure to his son; Learned Hand later described the relationship with his father as "not really intimate". Samuel Hand died from cancer when Learned was 14. Learned's mother thereafter promoted an idealized memory of her husband's professional success, intellectual abilities, and parental perfection, placing considerable pressure on her son.


title: Learned Hand

text: Lydia Hand was an involved and protective mother, who had been influenced by a Calvinist aunt as a child; and she passed on a strong sense of duty and guilt to her only son. Learned Hand eventually came to understand the influences of his parents as formative. After his father's death, he looked to religion to help him cope, writing to his cousin Augustus Noble Hand: "If you could imagine one half the comfort my religion has given to me in this terrible loss, you would see that Christ never forsakes those who cling to him." The depth of Hand's early religious convictions was in sharp contrast to his later agnosticism.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand was beset by anxieties and self-doubt throughout his life, including night terrors as a child. He later admitted he was "very undecided, always have been—a very insecure person, very fearful; morbidly fearful". Especially after his father's death, he grew up surrounded by doting women—his mother, his aunt, and his sister Lydia (Lily), eight years his elder. Hand struggled with his name during his childhood and adulthood, worried that "Billings" and "Learned" were not sufficiently masculine. While working as a lawyer in 1899, he ceased using the name "Billings"—calling it "pompous"—and ultimately took on the nickname "B".


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand spent two years at a small primary school before transferring at the age of seven to The Albany Academy, which he attended for the next 10 years. He never enjoyed the Academy's uninspired teaching or its narrow curriculum, which focused on Ancient Greek and Latin, with few courses in English, history, science, or modern languages. Socially, he considered himself an outsider, rarely enjoying recesses or the school's military drills. Vacations, spent in Elizabethtown, New York, were happier times. There, Hand developed a life-long friendship with his cousin and future colleague Augustus Noble Hand, two years his senior. The two were self-confessed "wild boys", camping and hiking in the woods and hills, where Hand developed a love of nature and the countryside. Many years later, when he was in his 70s, Hand recorded several songs for the Library of Congress that he had learned as a boy from Civil War veterans in Elizabethtown. After his father's death, he felt more pressure from his mother to excel academically. He finished near the top of his class and was accepted into Harvard College. His classmates—who opted for schools such as Williams and Yale—thought it a "stuckup, snobbish school".


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand started at Harvard College in 1889, initially focusing on classical studies and mathematics as advised by his late father. At the end of his sophomore year, he changed direction. He embarked on courses in philosophy and economics, studying under the eminent and inspirational philosophers William James, Josiah Royce and George Santayana.


title: Learned Hand

text: At first, Hand found Harvard a difficult social environment. He was not selected for any of the social clubs that dominated campus life, and he felt this exclusion keenly. He was equally unsuccessful with the Glee Club and the football team; for a time he rowed as a substitute for the rowing club. He later described himself as a "serious boy", a hard worker who did not smoke, drink, or consort with prostitutes. He mixed more in his sophomore and senior years. He became a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and appeared as a blond-wigged chorus girl in the 1892 student musical. He was also elected president of "The Harvard Advocate", a student literary magazine.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's studious ways resulted in his election to Phi Beta Kappa, an elite society of scholarly students. He graduated with highest honors, was awarded an Artium Magister degree as well as an Artium Baccalaureus degree, and was chosen by his classmates to deliver the Class Day oration at the 1893 commencement. Family tradition and expectation suggested that he would study law after graduation. For a while, he seriously considered post-graduate work in philosophy, but he received no encouragement from his family or philosophy professors. Doubting himself, he "drifted" toward law.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's three years at Harvard Law School were intellectually and socially stimulating. In his second year, he moved into a boarding house with a group of fellow law students who were to become close friends. They studied hard and enjoyed discussing philosophy and literature and telling bawdy tales. Hand's learned reputation proved less of a hindrance at law school than it had as an undergraduate. He was elected to the Pow-Wow Club, in which law students practiced their skills in moot courts. He was also chosen as an editor of the "Harvard Law Review", although he resigned in 1894 because it took too much time from his studies.


title: Learned Hand

text: During the 1890s, Harvard Law School was pioneering the casebook method of teaching introduced by Dean Christopher Langdell. Apart from Langdell, Hand's professors included Samuel Williston, John Chipman Gray, and James Barr Ames. Hand preferred those teachers who valued common sense and fairness, and ventured beyond casebook study into the philosophy of law. His favorite professor was James Bradley Thayer, who taught him evidence in his second year and constitutional law in his third. A man of broad interests, Thayer became a major influence on Hand's jurisprudence. He emphasized the law's historical and human dimensions rather than its certainties and extremes. He stressed the need for courts to exercise judicial restraint in deciding social issues.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand graduated from Harvard Law School with a Bachelor of Laws in 1896 at the age of 24. He returned to Albany to live with his mother and aunt and started work for the law firm in which an uncle, Matthew Hale, was a partner. Hale's unexpected death a few months later obliged Hand to move to a new firm, but by 1899, he had become a partner. He had difficulty attracting his own clients and found the work trivial and dull. Much of his time was spent researching and writing briefs, with few opportunities for the appellate work he preferred. His early courtroom appearances, when they came, were frequently difficult, sapping his fragile self-confidence. He began to fear that he lacked the ability to think on his feet in court.


title: Learned Hand

text: For two years, Hand tried to succeed as a lawyer by force of will, giving all his time to the practice. By 1900, he was deeply dissatisfied with his progress. For intellectual stimulation, he increasingly looked outside his daily work. He wrote scholarly articles, taught part-time at Albany Law School, and joined a lawyers' discussion group in New York City. He also developed an interest in politics.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand came from a line of loyal Democrats, but in 1898 he voted for Republican Theodore Roosevelt as governor of New York. Though he deplored Roosevelt's role in the "militant imperialism" of the Spanish–American War, he approved of the "amorphous mixture of socialism and laisser faire " in Roosevelt's campaign speeches. Hand caused further family controversy by registering as a Republican for the presidential election of 1900. Life and work in Albany no longer fulfilled him; he began applying for jobs in New York City, despite family pressure against moving.


title: Learned Hand

text: After reaching the age of 30 without developing a serious interest in a woman, Hand thought he was destined for bachelorhood. But, during a 1901 summer holiday in the Québec resort of La Malbaie, he met 25-year-old Frances Fincke, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. Though indecisive in most matters, he waited only a few weeks before proposing. The more cautious Fincke postponed her answer for almost a year, while Hand wrote to and occasionally saw her. He also began to look more seriously for work in New York City. The next summer, both Hand and Fincke returned to La Malbaie, and at the end of August 1902, they became engaged and kissed for the first time. They married on December 6, 1902, shortly after Hand had accepted a post with the Manhattan law firm of Zabriskie, Burrill & Murray. The couple had three daughters: Mary Deshon (born 1905), Frances (born 1907), and Constance (born 1909). Hand proved an anxious husband and father. He corresponded regularly with his doctor brother-in-law about initial difficulties in conceiving and about his children's illnesses. He survived pneumonia in February 1905, taking months to recover.


title: Learned Hand

text: The family at first spent summers in Mount Kisco, with Hand commuting on the weekends. After 1910, they rented summer homes in Cornish, New Hampshire, a writers' and artists' colony with a stimulating social scene. The Hands bought a house there in 1919, which they called "Low Court". As Cornish was a nine-hour train journey from New York, the couple were separated for long periods. Hand could join the family only for vacations. The Hands became friends of the popular artist Maxfield Parrish, who lived in nearby Plainfield. The Misses Hand posed for some of his paintings.


title: Learned Hand

text: The Hands also became close friends of Cornish resident Louis Dow, a Dartmouth College professor. Frances Hand spent increasing amounts of time with Dow while her husband was in New York, and tension crept into the marriage. Despite speculation, there is no evidence that she and Dow were lovers. Hand regretted Frances' long absences and urged her to spend more time with him, but he maintained an enduring friendship with Dow. He blamed himself for a lack of insight into his wife's needs in the early years of the marriage, confessing his "blindness and insensibility to what you wanted and to your right to your own ways when they differed from mine". Fearing he might otherwise lose her altogether, Hand came to accept Frances' desire to spend time in the country with another man.


title: Learned Hand

text: While staying in Cornish in 1908, Hand began a close friendship with the political commentator and philosopher Herbert Croly. At the time, Croly was writing his influential book "The Promise of American Life", in which he advocated a program of democratic and egalitarian reform under a national government with increased powers. When the book was published in November 1909, Hand sent copies to friends and acquaintances, including former president Theodore Roosevelt. Croly's ideas had a powerful effect on Roosevelt's politics, influencing his advocacy of New Nationalism and the development of Progressivism.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand continued to be disappointed in his progress at work. A move to the firm of Gould & Wilkie in January 1904 brought neither the challenges nor the financial rewards for which he had hoped. "I was never any good as a lawyer," he later admitted. "I didn't have any success, any at all." In 1907, deciding that at the age of 35 success as a Wall Street lawyer was out of reach, he lobbied for a potential new federal judgeship in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the federal court headquartered in Manhattan. He became involved briefly in local Republican politics to strengthen his political base. In the event, Congress did not create the new judgeship in 1907; but, when the post was finally created in 1909, Hand renewed his candidacy. With the help of the influential Charles C. Burlingham, a senior New York lawyer and close friend, he gained the backing of Attorney General George W. Wickersham, who urged President William Howard Taft to appoint Hand. One of the youngest federal judges ever appointed, Hand took his judicial oath at age 37 in April 1909.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand served as a United States district judge in the Southern District of New York from 1909 to 1924. He dealt with fields of common law, including torts, contracts, and copyright, and admiralty law. His unfamiliarity with some of these specialties, along with his limited courtroom experience, caused him anxiety at first. Most of Hand's early cases concerned bankruptcy issues, which he found tiresome, and patent law, which fascinated him.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand made some important decisions in the area of free speech. A frequently cited 1913 decision is "United States v. Kennerley", an obscenity case concerning Daniel Carson Goodman's "Hagar Revelly", a social-hygiene novel about the "wiles of vice," which had caught the attention of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Hand allowed the case to go forward on the basis of the Hicklin test, which stemmed back to a seminal English decision of 1868, "Regina v. Hicklin". In his opinion, Hand recommended updating the law, arguing that the obscenity rule should not simply protect the most susceptible readers but should reflect community standards:


title: Learned Hand

text: It seems hardly likely that we are even to-day so lukewarm in our interest in letters or serious discussion as to be content to reduce our treatment of sex to the standard of a child's library in the supposed interest of a salacious few, or that shame will for long prevent us from adequate portrayal of some of the most serious and beautiful sides of human nature.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand was politically active in the cause of New Nationalism. With reservations, in 1911 he supported Theodore Roosevelt's return to national politics. He approved of the ex-president's plans to legislate on behalf of the underprivileged and to control corporations, as well as of his campaign against the abuse of judicial power. Hand sought to influence Roosevelt's views on these subjects, both in person and in print, and wrote articles for Roosevelt's magazine, "The Outlook". His hopes of swaying Roosevelt were often dashed. Roosevelt's poor grasp of legal issues particularly exasperated Hand.


title: Learned Hand

text: Despite overwhelming support for Roosevelt in the primaries and polls, the Republicans renominated the incumbent President Taft. A furious Roosevelt bolted from the party to form the Progressive Party, nicknamed the "Bull Moose" movement. Most Republican progressives followed him, including Hand. The splitting of the Republican vote harmed both Roosevelt's and Taft's chances of winning the 1912 presidential election. As Hand expected, Roosevelt lost to the Democratic Party's Woodrow Wilson, though he polled more votes than Taft.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand took the defeat in his stride. He considered the election merely as a first step in a reform campaign for "real national democracy". Though he had limited his public involvement in the election campaign, he now took part in planning a party structure. He also accepted the Progressive nomination for chief judge of New York Court of Appeals, then an elective position, in September 1913. He refused to campaign, and later admitted that "the thought of harassing the electorate was more than I could bear". His vow of silence affected his showing, and he received only 13% of the votes. Hand came to regret his candidacy: "I ought to have lain off, as I now view it; I was a judge and a judge has no business to mess into such things."


title: Learned Hand

text: By 1916, Hand realized that the Progressive Party had no future, as the liberal policies of the Democratic government were making much of its program redundant. Roosevelt's decision not to stand in the 1916 presidential election dealt the party its death blow. Hand had already turned to an alternative political outlet in Herbert Croly's "The New Republic", a liberal magazine which he had helped launch in 1914. Hand wrote a series of unsigned articles for the magazine on issues of social reform and judicial power; his only signed article was "The Hope of the Minimum Wage", published in November 1916, which called for laws to protect the underprivileged. Often attending staff dinners and meetings, Hand became a close friend of the gifted young editor Walter Lippmann. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 had coincided with the founding of the magazine, whose pages often debated the events in Europe. "The New Republic" adopted a cautiously sympathetic stance towards the Allies, which Hand supported wholeheartedly. After the United States entered the war in 1917, Hand considered leaving the bench to assist the war effort. Several possible war-related positions were suggested to him. Nothing came of them, aside from his chairing a committee on intellectual property law that suggested treaty amendments for the Paris Peace Conference.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand made his most memorable decision of the war in 1917 in "Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten". After the country joined the war, Congress had enacted an Espionage Act that made it a federal crime to hinder the war effort. The first test of the new law came two weeks later when the postmaster of New York City refused to deliver the August issue of "The Masses", a self-described "revolutionary journal". The edition contained drawings, cartoons, and articles criticizing the government's decision to go to war.


title: Learned Hand

text: The publishing company sought an injunction to prevent the ban, and the case came before Judge Hand. In July 1917, he ruled that the journal should not be barred from distribution through the mail. Though "The Masses" supported those who refused to serve in the forces, its text did not, in Hand's view, tell readers that they "must" violate the law. Hand argued that suspect material should be judged on what he called an "incitement test": only if its language directly urged readers to violate the law was it seditious—otherwise freedom of speech should be protected. This focus on the words themselves, rather than on their effect, was novel and daring; but Hand's decision was promptly stayed, and later overturned on appeal. He always maintained that his ruling had been correct. Between 1918 and 1919, he attempted to convince Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a man he greatly admired, of his argument. His efforts at first appeared fruitless, but Holmes' dissenting opinion in "Abrams v. United States" in November 1919 urged greater protection of political speech. Scholars have credited the critiques of Hand, Ernst Freund, Louis Brandeis, and Zechariah Chafee for the change in Holmes's views. In the long-term, Hand's decision proved a landmark in the history of free speech in the country. In "Brandenburg v. Ohio" (1969), the Supreme Court announced a standard for protecting free speech that in effect recognized his "Masses" opinion as law.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand had known that ruling against the government might harm his prospects of promotion. By the time of the case, he was already the most senior judge of his district. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit often summoned him to sit with that court to hear appeals, a task he found stimulating. In 1917, he lobbied for promotion to the Second Circuit, but the unpopularity of his "Masses" decision and his reputation as a liberal stood against him. He was passed over in favor of Martin T. Manton.


title: Learned Hand

text: In the final months of the war, Hand increasingly supported President Woodrow Wilson's post-war foreign policy objectives. He believed the United States should endorse the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, despite their flaws. This position estranged him from Croly and others at "The New Republic", who vehemently rejected both. Alienated from his old circle on the magazine and by the reactionary and isolationist mood of the country, Hand found himself politically homeless.


title: Learned Hand

text: The next Second Circuit vacancy arose in 1921, but with the conservative Warren G. Harding administration in power, Hand did not put himself forward. Nonetheless, Hand's reputation was such that by 1923, Justice Holmes wanted him on the Supreme Court, and in 1924 Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge, appointed Hand to the Second Circuit. It was a sign of Hand's increased stature that figures such as Coolidge and Chief Justice William Howard Taft now endorsed him. Coolidge sought to add new blood to a senior judiciary that was seen as corrupt and inefficient. In 1926 and 1927, the Second Circuit was strengthened by the appointments of Thomas Walter Swan and Hand's cousin Augustus Noble Hand.


title: Learned Hand

text: After the demise of the Progressive Party, Hand had withdrawn from party politics. He committed himself to public impartiality, despite his strong views on political issues. He remained, a strong supporter of freedom of speech, and any sign of the "merry sport of Red-baiting" troubled him. In 1920, for example, he wrote in support of New York Governor Al Smith's veto of the anti-sedition Lusk Bills. The New York Assembly had approved these bills in a move to bar five elected Socialist Party legislators from taking their seats. In 1922, Hand privately objected to a proposed limit on the number of Jewish students admitted to Harvard College. "If we are to have in this country racial divisions like those in Europe," he wrote, "let us close up shop now".


title: Learned Hand

text: In public, Hand discussed issues of democracy, free speech, and toleration only in general terms. This discretion, plus a series of impressive speaking engagements, won him the respect of legal scholars and journalists, and by 1930 he was viewed as a serious candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court. His friend Felix Frankfurter, then a Harvard Law School professor, was among those lobbying hard for Hand's appointment. President Herbert Hoover chose to bypass him, possibly for political reasons, and appointed Charles Evans Hughes, who had previously served on the Court for six years before resigning to become the Republican nominee for President in 1916, as Chief Justice. With Hughes and another New Yorker, Harlan Fiske Stone, on the Court, the promotion of a third New Yorker was then seen as impossible.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand had voted for Hoover in 1928, and he did so again in 1932; but in 1936, he voted for the Democrats and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a reaction to the economic and social turmoil that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. With the Great Depression setting in, Hand favored a policy of interventionist central government. He came to accept Frankfurter's view that redistribution of wealth was essential for economic recovery. Hoover resisted this approach, favoring individualism and free enterprise. Roosevelt, on the other hand, promised the voters a New Deal. They elected him on a platform of strong executive leadership and radical economic reform. Hand voted for Roosevelt again in 1940 and 1944, but he remained vigilant on the constitutional dangers of big government. Like others, including Walter Lippmann, he sensed the dictatorial potential of New Deal policies. He had no hesitation in condemning Roosevelt's 1937 bill to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with New Dealers.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand was increasingly called upon to judge cases arising from the flood of New Deal legislation. The line between central government authority and local legislation particularly tested his powers of judgment. In 1935, the case of "United States v. Schechter" came before the Second Circuit. Hand and his two colleagues had to judge whether a New York poultry firm had contravened New Deal legislation on unfair trade practices. They ruled that the National Industrial Recovery Act did not apply to the Schechter Poultry Corporation, which traded solely within the state. "The line is no doubt in the end arbitrary," Hand wrote in a memorandum, "but we have got to draw it, because without it Congress can take over all the government." The Supreme Court later affirmed Hand's decision.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand became an acknowledged expert on New Deal statutes. He relished the challenge of interpreting such legislation, calling it "an act of creative imagination". In a 1933 broadcast, he explained the balancing act required of a judge in interpreting statutes:


title: Learned Hand

text: On the one hand he must not enforce whatever he thinks best; he must leave that to the common will expressed by the government. On the other, he must try as best he can to put into concrete form what that will is, not by slavishly following the words, but by trying honestly to say what was the underlying purpose expressed.


title: Learned Hand

text: When war broke out in Europe in 1939, Learned Hand adopted an anti-isolationist stance. He rarely spoke out publicly, not only because of his position but because he thought bellicosity unseemly in an old man. In February 1939, he became his court's senior circuit leader (in effect, chief judge, although the title was not created until 1948). In this post, Hand succeeded Martin Manton, who had resigned after corruption allegations that later led to Manton's criminal conviction for bribery. Not an admirer of Manton, Hand nonetheless testified at his trial that he had never noticed any corrupt behavior in his predecessor. Having sat in two cases in which Manton accepted bribes, Hand worried for years afterward that he should have detected his colleague's corruption.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand still regarded his main job as judging. As circuit leader, he sought to free himself and his judges from too great an administrative burden. He concentrated on maintaining good relations with his fellow judges and on cleansing the court of patronage appointments. Despite the Manton case and constant friction between two of the court's judges, Charles Edward Clark and Jerome Frank, the Second Circuit under Hand earned a reputation as one of the best appeal courts in the country's history.


title: Learned Hand

text: In 1942, Hand's friends once again lobbied for him to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, but Roosevelt did not appoint him. The president gave age as the reason, but philosophical differences with Hand may also have played a part. Another explanation lies in one of Justice William O. Douglas's autobiographies, where Douglas states that, despite Roosevelt's belief that Hand was the best person for the job, Roosevelt had been offended by the pressure Justice Felix Frankfurter placed on the president during a vigorous letter-writing campaign on Hand's behalf. D.C. circuit judge Wiley Blount Rutledge, whom Roosevelt appointed, died in 1949, while Hand lived until 1961. In a February 1944 correspondence with Frankfurter, Hand expressed a low opinion of Roosevelt's new appointees, referring to Justice Hugo Black, Justice Douglas, and Justice Frank Murphy as "Hillbilly Hugo, Good Old Bill, and Jesus lover of my Soul". Deeply disappointed at the time, Hand later regretted his ambition: "It was the importance, the power, the trappings of the God damn thing that really drew me on."


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand was relieved when the United States entered the war in December 1941. He felt free to participate in organizations and initiatives connected with the war effort, and was particularly committed to programs in support of Greece and Russia. He backed Roosevelt for the 1944 election, partly because he feared a return to isolationism and the prolonging of the wartime erosion of civil liberties. In 1943, the House Un-American Activities Committee or "Dies Committee", for example, had aroused his fears with an investigation into "subversive activities" by government workers. Hand's contemporary at Harvard College, Robert Morss Lovett, was one of those accused, and Hand spoke out on his behalf. As the end of the war approached, there was much talk of international peace organizations and courts to prevent future conflict, but Hand was skeptical. He also condemned the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, which he saw as motivated by vengeance; he did not believe that "aggressive war" could be construed as a crime. "The difference between vengeance and justice," he wrote later, "is that justice must apply to all."


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand had never been well known to the general public, but a short speech he made in 1944 won him fame and a national reputation for learnedness that lasted until the end of his life. On May 21, 1944, he addressed almost one and a half million people in Central Park, New York, at the annual "I Am an American Day" event, where newly naturalized citizens swore the Pledge of Allegiance. He stated that all Americans were immigrants who had come to America in search of liberty. Liberty, he said, was not located in America's constitutions, laws, and courts, but in the hearts of the people. In what would become the speech's most quoted passage, Hand asked:


title: Learned Hand

text: What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.


title: Learned Hand

text: Extracts of the speech appeared in "The New Yorker" on June 10. Several weeks later, "The New York Times" printed the whole text. "Life" magazine and "Reader's Digest" followed soon after. Hand's message that liberty is safeguarded by everyday Americans struck a popular chord, and he suddenly found himself a folk hero. Though he enjoyed the acclaim, he thought it unmerited. His biographer Gerald Gunther, noting the paradox of the agnostic Hand's use of religious overtones, suggests that the most challenging aspect of the speech was that the spirit of liberty must entertain doubt.


title: Learned Hand

text: Learned Hand's 75th birthday in 1947 was much celebrated in the press and in legal circles. C. C. Burlingham, Hand's former sponsor, for example, called him "now unquestionably the first among American judges". Hand remained modest in the face of such acclaim. He continued to work as before, combining his role as presiding judge of the Second Circuit with his engagement in political issues. In 1947, he voiced his opposition to a proposed "group libel" statute that would have banned defamation of racial or minority groups. He argued that such a law would imply that intolerance could base itself upon evidence. The effect of the proposed prosecutions, he said, would be "rather to exacerbate than to assuage the feelings which lie behind the defamation of groups".


title: Learned Hand

text: In the postwar period, Hand shared the dismay of his compatriots about Stalinism and the onset of the Cold War. At the same time, he was sensitive to the domestic problems created by what he saw as a hysterical fear of international Communism. Already in 1947, he noted that "the frantic witch hunters are given free rein to set up a sort of Inquisition, detecting heresy wherever non-conformity appears". He was distressed by the crusade against domestic subversion that had become part of American public life after the war.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand particularly despised the anti-Communist campaign of Senator Joseph McCarthy that began in 1950 and which became known as McCarthyism. Though Hand expressed his horror of McCarthyism privately, he hesitated to do so publicly because cases arising from it were likely to come before his court.


title: Learned Hand

text: During this period, Hand took part in three cases that posed a particular challenge to his impartiality on Cold War issues: "United States v. Coplon", "Dennis v. United States", and "United States v. Remington".


title: Learned Hand

text: Department of Justice worker Judith Coplon had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing and attempting to pass on defense information. In 1950, her appeal came before a Second Circuit panel that included Learned Hand. It rested on her claim that her rights under the Fourth Amendment had been infringed by a warrantless search, and that details of illegal wiretaps had not been fully disclosed at trial. Although Hand was unambiguous in his view Coplon had been guilty of the charges against her, he nonetheless rejected the trial judge's conclusion that a warrantless arrest had been justified. He ruled therefore that papers seized during the arrest had been inadmissible as evidence. The trial judge's failure to disclose all the wiretap records, Hand concluded, necessitated a reversal of Coplon's conviction. In his opinion, Hand wrote: "[F]ew weapons in the arsenal of freedom are more useful than the power to compel a government to disclose the evidence on which it seeks to forfeit the liberty of its citizens." Hand received hate mail after this decision.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's position in the 1950 case "Dennis v. United States" contrasted sharply with his "Coplon" opinion. In "Dennis", Hand affirmed the convictions under the 1940 Smith Act of eleven leaders of the Communist Party of the United States for subversion. He ruled that calls for the violent overthrow of the American government posed enough of a "probable danger" to justify the invasion of free speech. After the ruling, he was attacked from the other political direction for appearing to side with McCarthyism.


title: Learned Hand

text: In 1953, Hand wrote a scathing dissent from a Second Circuit decision affirming the perjury conviction of William Remington, a government economist accused of Communist sympathies and activities. In 1951, the same panel had originally overturned Remington's conviction for perjury. Rather than retrying Remington on their original perjury charges, the government instead brought new perjury charges based on his testimony at the first trial. He was convicted of two charges. In the latter appeal, Hand was outvoted two to one. The prosecution produced stronger evidence against Remington at the second trial, much of it obtained from his wife. Sentenced to three years' imprisonment, Remington was murdered in November 1954 by two fellow inmates, who beat him over the head with a brick wrapped in a sock. According to Hand's biographer Gunther, "The image of Remington being bludgeoned to death in prison haunted Hand for the rest of his life."


title: Learned Hand

text: Only after stepping down from his position as a full-time judge in 1951 did Hand join the public debate on McCarthyism. Shortly after his semi-retirement, he gave an unscripted speech that was published in "The Washington Post", an anti-McCarthy newspaper. Hand wrote:


title: Learned Hand

text: [M]y friends, will you not agree that any society which begins to be doubtful of itself; in which one man looks at another and says: "He may be a traitor," in which that spirit has disappeared which says: "I will not accept that, I will not believe that—I will demand proof. I will not say of my brother that he may be a traitor," but I will say, "Produce what you have. I will judge it fairly, and if he is, he shall pay the penalties; but I will not take it on rumor. I will not take it on hearsay. I will remember that what has brought us up from savagery is a loyalty to truth, and truth cannot emerge unless it is subjected to the utmost scrutiny"—will you not agree that a society that has lost sight of that, cannot survive?


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand followed this up with an address to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York the next year. Once again, his attack on McCarthyism won approval from many liberals. Asked to send a copy of his views to McCarthy, Hand replied that he had Richard Nixon in mind as well. Despite his concerns about Nixon as vice president, Hand voted for Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 election and later credited Eisenhower with bringing about McCarthy's downfall in 1954.


title: Learned Hand

text: In 1951, Hand retired from "regular active service" as a federal judge. He assumed senior status, a form of semi-retirement, and continued to sit on the bench, with a considerable workload. The following year, he published "The Spirit of Liberty", a collection of papers and addresses that neither he nor publisher Alfred A. Knopf expected to make a profit. In fact, the book earned admiring reviews, sold well, and made Hand more widely known. A 1958 paperback edition sold even better, though Hand always refused royalties from material he never intended for publication.


title: Learned Hand

text: Louis Dow had died in 1944, with Frances Hand at his side. The Hands' marriage then entered its final, happiest phase, in which they rediscovered their first love. He was convinced that his wife had rescued him from a life as a "melancholic, a failure [because] I should have thought myself so, and probably single and hopelessly hypochondriac".


title: Learned Hand

text: Former law clerks have provided intimate details of Hand's character during the last decade of his life. Legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin recalls that Hand, scrupulous about public economy, used to turn out the lights in all the offices at the end of each day. For the same reason, he refused Dworkin the customary month's paid vacation at the end of his service. Shortly afterward, to Dworkin's surprise, Hand wrote him a personal check for an extra month's pay as a wedding present. Hand was known for his explosive temper. Gunther remembers him throwing a paperweight in his direction which narrowly missed. Hand had a habit of turning his seat 180° on lawyers whose arguments annoyed him, and he could be bitingly sarcastic. In a typical memo, he wrote, "This is the most miserable of cases, but we must dispose of it as though it had been presented by actual lawyers." Despite such outbursts, Hand was deeply insecure throughout his life, as he fully recognized. In his 80s, he still fretted about his rejection by the elite social clubs at Harvard College.


title: Learned Hand

text: Learned Hand remained in good physical and mental condition for most of the last decade of his life. In 1958, he gave the Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School. These lectures proved to be Hand's last major critique of judicial activism, a position he had first taken up in 1908 with his attack on the "Lochner" ruling. They included a controversial attack on the Warren Court's 1954 decision in "Brown v. Board of Education", which in Hand's opinion had exceeded its powers by overruling Jim Crow segregation laws. His views were widely criticized as reactionary and unfortunate, with most deploring the fact that they might encourage segregationists who opposed libertarian judicial rulings. Published as "The Bill of Rights", the lectures nevertheless became a national bestseller.


title: Learned Hand

text: "Catcher in the Rye" author J. D. Salinger became a neighbor in Cornish, New Hampshire in 1953, and Hand became Salinger's best and almost only friend as Salinger become more and more reclusive.


title: Learned Hand

text: By 1958, Hand was suffering from intense pain in his back and faced difficulty in walking. "I can just manage, with not infrequent pauses, to walk about a third of a mile," he wrote to Felix Frankfurter. "My feet get very numb and my back painful. The truth is that 86 is too long." Soon, he was obliged to use crutches, but he remained mentally sharp and continued to hear cases. In 1960, he worked briefly on President Dwight Eisenhower's "Commission on National Goals", but he resigned because "it involved more work than in the present state of my health I care to add to the judicial work that I am still trying to do".


title: Learned Hand

text: By June 1961, Hand was in a wheelchair. He joked that he felt idle because he had taken part in no more than about 25 cases that year, and that he would start another job if he could find one. The following month, he suffered a heart attack at Cornish. He was taken to St Luke's Hospital in New York City, where he died peacefully on August 18, 1961. "The New York Times" ran a front-page obituary. "The Times" of London wrote: "There are many who will feel that with the death of Learned Hand the golden age of the American judiciary has come to an end."


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's study of philosophy at Harvard left a lasting imprint on his thought. As a student, he lost his faith in God, and from that point on he became a skeptic. Hand's view of the world has been identified as relativistic; in the words of scholar Kathryn Griffith, "[i]t was his devotion to a concept of relative values that prompted him to question opinions of the Supreme Court which appeared to place one value absolutely above the others, whether the value was that of individual freedom or equality or the protection of young people from obscene literature." Hand instead sought objective standards in constitutional law, most famously in obscenity and civil liberties cases. He saw the Constitution and the law as compromises to resolve conflicting interests, possessing no moral force of their own. This denial that any divine or natural rights are embodied in the Constitution led Hand to a positivistic view of the Bill of Rights. In this approach, provisions of the Constitution, such as freedom of press, freedom of speech, and equal protection, should be interpreted through their wording and in the light of historical analysis rather than as "guides on concrete occasions". For Hand, moral values were a product of their times and a matter of taste.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's civil instincts were at odds with the duty of a judge to stay aloof from politics. As a judge he respected even bad laws; as a member of society he felt free to question the decisions behind legislation. In his opinion, members of a democratic society should be involved in legislative decision-making. He therefore regarded toleration as a prerequisite of civil liberty. In practice, this even meant that those who wish to promote ideas repugnant to the majority should be free to do so, within broad limits.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's skepticism extended to his political philosophy: he once described himself as "a conservative among liberals, and a liberal among conservatives". As early as 1898, he rejected his family's Jeffersonian Democratic tradition. His thoughts on liberty, collected in "The Spirit of Liberty" (1952), began by recalling the political philosophies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson believed that each individual has a right to freedom, and that government, though necessary, threatens that freedom. In contrast, Hamilton argued that freedom depends on government: too much freedom leads to anarchy and the tyranny of the mob. Hand, who believed, following Thomas Hobbes, that the rule of law is the only alternative to the rule of brutality, leaned towards Hamilton. Since the freedom granted to the American pioneers was no longer feasible, he accepted that individual liberty should be moderated by society's norms. He nevertheless saw the liberty to create and to choose as vital to peoples' humanity and entitled to legal protection. He assumed the goal of human beings to be the "good life", defined as each individual chooses.


title: Learned Hand

text: Between 1910 and 1916, Hand tried to translate his political philosophy into political action. Having read Croly's "The Promise of American Life" and its anti-Jeffersonian plea for government intervention in economic and social issues, he joined the Progressive Party. He discovered that party politicking was incompatible not only with his role as a judge but with his philosophical objectivity. The pragmatic philosophy Hand had imbibed from William James at Harvard required each issue to be individually judged on its merits, without partiality. In contrast, political action required partisanship and a choice between values. After 1916, Hand preferred to retreat from party politics into a detached skepticism. His belief in central planning resurfaced during the 1930s in his growing approval of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, as he once again—though this time as an observer—endorsed a program of government intervention. Hand was also an interventionist on foreign policy, supporting U.S. involvement in both world wars, and disdained isolationism.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand has been called one of the United States' most significant judicial philosophers. A leading advocate of judicial restraint, he took seriously Alexander Hamilton's formulation that "the judiciary ... may truly be said to have neither "force" nor "will", but merely judgement." Any judicial ruling that had the effect of legislating from the bench troubled Hand. In 1908, in his article "Due Process of Law and the Eight-Hour Day", he attacked the 1905 Supreme Court ruling in "Lochner v. New York", which had struck down a law prohibiting bakery staff from working more than ten hours a day. The Supreme Court went on to strike down a series of similar worker-protective laws on the grounds that they restricted freedom of contract. Hand regarded this principle as undemocratic. "For the state to intervene", he argued, "to make more just and equal the relative strategic advantages of the two parties to the contract, of whom one is under the pressure of absolute want, while the other is not, is as proper a legislative function as that it should neutralize the relative advantages arising from fraudulent cunning or from superior force."


title: Learned Hand

text: The issue concerned Hand again during the New Deal period, when the Supreme Court repeatedly overturned or blocked Franklin D. Roosevelt's legislation. As an instinctive democrat, Hand was appalled that an elected government should have its laws struck down in this way. He viewed it as a judicial "usurpation" for the Supreme Court to assume the role of a third chamber in these cases. As far as he was concerned, the Constitution already provided a full set of checks and balances on legislation. Nevertheless, Hand did not hesitate to condemn Roosevelt's frustrated attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937, which led commentators to warn of totalitarianism. The answer, for Hand, lay in the separation of powers: courts should be independent and act on the legislation of elected governments.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand's democratic respect for legislation meant that he hardly ever struck down a law. Whenever his decisions went against the government, he based them only on the boundaries of law in particular cases. He adhered to the doctrine of presumptive validity, which assumes that legislators know what they are doing when they pass a law. Even when a law was uncongenial to him, or when it seemed contradictory, Hand set himself to interpret the legislative intent. Sometimes he was obliged to draw the line between federal and state laws, as in "United States v. Schechter Poultry". In this important case, he ruled that a New Deal law on working conditions did not apply to a New York poultry firm that conducted its business only within the state. Hand wrote in his opinion: "It is always a serious thing to declare any act of Congress unconstitutional, and especially in a case where it is part of a comprehensive plan for the rehabilitation of the nation as a whole. With the wisdom of that plan we have nothing whatever to do ..."


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand also occasionally went against the government in the area of free speech. He believed that courts should protect the right to free speech even against the majority will. In Hand's view, judges must remain detached at times when public opinion is hostile to minorities and governments issue laws to repress those minorities. Hand was the first judge to rule on a case arising from the Espionage Act of 1917, which sought to silence opposition to the war effort. In his decision on "Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten", he defined his position on political incitement:


title: Learned Hand

text: Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard for free government. The distinction is not scholastic subterfuge, but a hard-bought acquisition in the fight for freedom.


title: Learned Hand

text: In the case of "United States v. Dennis" in 1950, Hand made a ruling that appeared to contradict his "Masses" decision. By then, a series of precedents had intervened, often based on Oliver Wendell Holmes's "clear and present danger" test, leaving him less room for maneuver. Hand felt he had "no choice" but to agree that threats against the government by a group of Communists were illegal under the repressive Smith Act of 1940. In order to do so, he interpreted the "clear and present danger" in a new way. "In each case," he wrote, "[courts] must ask whether the gravity of the 'evil', discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger." This formula allowed more scope for curbing free speech in cases where, as the government believed with Communism, the danger was grave, whether it was immediate or not. Critics and disappointed liberals accused Hand of placing his concern for judicial restraint ahead of freedom of speech. Hand confided to a friend that, if it had been up to him, he would "never have prosecuted those birds".


title: Learned Hand

text: In the opinion of Kathryn Griffith, "The importance of Learned Hand's philosophy in terms of practical application to the courts lies generally in his view of the pragmatic origin of all law, but most specifically in his unique interpretation of the Bill of Rights." Hand proposed that the Bill of Rights was not law at all but a set of "admonitory" principles to ensure the fair exercise of constitutional powers. He therefore opposed the use of its "due process of law" clauses as a pretext for national intervention in state legislation. He even advocated the removal of those clauses from the Constitution. In Hand's analysis, "due process" is no more than a stock phrase to cover a long tradition of common law procedure. He contended that the term had inflated in scope beyond the meaning intended in the Bill of Rights. The result was the misuse of due process to invade rights that the Constitution was designed to protect. For Hand, a law passed by an elected body should be presumed to meet the test of due process. A court that decides otherwise and strikes down such a law is acting undemocratically. Hand maintained this stance even when the Supreme Court struck down anti-liberal laws that he detested. His reasoning has never been widely accepted. Critics of his position included his colleague on the Second Circuit, Jerome Frank, who wrote: "[I]t seems to me that here, most uncharacteristically, Judge Hand indulges in a judgement far too sweeping, one which rests on a too-sharp either-or, all or nothing, dichotomy. ... Obviously the courts cannot do the whole job. But just as obviously, they can sometimes help to arrest evil popular trends at their inception."


title: Learned Hand

text: Richard Posner, an influential appellate judge reviewing a biography of Hand, asserts that Hand "displayed a positive antipathy toward constitutional law. To exaggerate only a little, he didn't think judges should have anything to do with it." Posner suggests that although Hand is remembered today as one of the three greatest judges in American history, his status as a truly "great judge" was not based on his "slight" contributions to First Amendment jurisprudence or other fields of constitutional law, but rather on his decisions in other areas such as antitrust, intellectual property, and tort law.


title: Learned Hand

text: Hand authored approximately 4,000 judicial opinions during his career. Admired for their clarity and analytic precision, they have been quoted more often in Supreme Court opinions and by legal scholars than those of any other lower-court judge. Both Hand's dissent in "United States v. Kennerley" and his ruling in "United States v. Levine" have often been cited in obscenity cases. Hand's view that literary works should be judged as a whole and in relation to their intended readership is now accepted in American law. His use of historical data to gauge legislative intent has become a widespread practice. According to Archibald Cox: "The opinions of Judge Hand have had significant influence both in breaking down the restrictions imposed by the dry literalism of conservative tradition and in showing how to use with sympathetic understanding the information afforded by the legislative and administrative processes." Hand's decision in the 1917 "Masses" case influenced Zechariah Chafee's widely read book, "Freedom of Speech" (1920). In his dedication, Chafee wrote, "[Hand] during the turmoil of war courageously maintained the traditions of English-speaking freedom and gave it new clearness and strength for the wiser years to come."


title: Learned Hand

text: Learned Hand played a key role in the interpretation of new federal crime laws in the period following the passing of the U.S. Criminal Code in 1909. In a series of judicial opinions and speeches, he opposed excessive concern for criminal defendants, and wrote "Our dangers do not lie in too little tenderness to the accused. Our procedure has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. ... What we need to fear is the archaic formalism and watery sentiment that obstructs, delays and defeats the prosecution of crime." He insisted that harmless trial errors should not automatically lead to a reversal on appeal. Hand balanced these views with important decisions to protect a defendant's constitutional rights concerning unreasonable searches, forced confessions and cumulative sentences.


title: Learned Hand

text: His opinions have also proved lasting in fields of commercial law. Law students studying torts often encounter Hand's 1947 decision for "United States v. Carroll Towing Co.", which gave a formula for determining liability in cases of negligence. Hand's interpretations of complex Internal Revenue Codes, which he called "a thicket of verbiage", have been used as guides in the gray area between individual and corporate taxes. In an opinion sometimes seen as condoning tax avoidance, Hand stated in 1947 that "there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible". He was referring to reporting of individual income through corporate tax forms for legitimate business reasons. In tax decisions, as in all statutory cases, Hand studied the intent of the original legislation. His opinions became a valuable guide to tax administrators. Hand's landmark decision in "United States v. Aluminum Company of America" in 1945 influenced the development of antitrust law. His decisions in patent, copyright, and admiralty cases have contributed to the development of law in those fields.