With exceptional efficiency and amiability, he led a Court that put the brakes on some of the excesses of the Earl Warren era while keeping pace with the sentiments of a majority of the country.

With exceptional efficiency and amiability, he led a court that put the brakes on some of the excesses of the Earl Warren era while keeping pace with the sentiments of a majority of the country. His administration of the court was brilliantly if quietly effective, making him one of the most impressive chief justices of the past hundred years.

Temperament, conviviality, moderation and the ability to get along with your colleagues are as important as ideology, ... was able to achieve unanimity on the most important decisions of his era simply by encouraging his fellow justices to live in the same boarding house, and discussing cases over glasses of Madeira.

Although the FBI is legally forbidden from monitoring the communications of citizens who are not targets under Carnivore, the mere knowledge that government agents have the technical capacity to read e-mail messages will greatly increase the uncertainty of innocent citizens,

The costs of social uncertainty about covert monitoring are simply too high to justify Carnivore in its current form.

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.