The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
of the judge who gives a decision, nor does the value of a rare painting
rest chiefly in the intensity of desire of the few rich connoisseurs who
compete for it. Back of the judge, giving _validity_ to his decision,
stands the will of the group; back of the rich connoisseurs stand the
legal and other social values concerned with the distribution of wealth,
by virtue of which they are able to make their wants felt in the market.
Both judge and connoisseur are focal points, through which stream the
social forces affecting the values in question. Both are important. But
the emotions and ideas of neither exhaust the psychological causation
involved in the values.
This is very much more apparent when we consider the values that arise
in the great speculative markets, say in the wheat pit, or the stock
exchange. Those who buy and sell are primarily interpreters, students,
of impersonal, social forces, seeking to adjust themselves to them, to
forecast them, in such a way as to derive profit from them. Their
choices and decisions are also factors. Indeed, it is possible to view
the matter in such a way as to make their decisions the whole story. In
the same way, it is possible to make the mind of the judge the final
explanation of the legal value. But the speculators themselves are under
no such illusion. They know very well that if they run counter to the
facts they will lose money. And the judge knows very well that the range
of arbitrary choice which he can exercise without impeachment, or at
least without reversal by a higher court, is very limited. Nor is even
a Supreme Court of the United States free to do its arbitrary will. Just
because it is so conspicuous, and because its doings are so important,
it has manifested more respect for judicial tradition, and more
responsiveness to the tides of public sentiment, than any other court in
the Federal Judiciary.[35]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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