美国前最高法院大法官戴维苏特尔2010年在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲——信仰是前进的明灯（中英）
Following is the text of his Address, delivered Thursday, May 27，2010.
以下是他的演讲内容，发表于2010年5月27日，周四。
When I was younger, I used to hear Harvard stories from a member of the class of 1885. Back then, old graduates of the College who could get to Cambridge on Commencement Day didn’t wait for reunion years to come back to the Yard. They'd just turn up, see old friends, look over the new crop, and have a cup of Commencement punch under the elms. The old man remembered one of those summer days when he was heading for the Square after lunch and crossed paths with a newly graduated senior, who had enjoyed quite a few cups of that punch. As the two men approached each other the younger one thrust out his new diploma and shouted, “Educated，by God.”
当我年轻时，我经常听1885班的一位校友讲述哈佛的往事。那时侯，那些可以 来剑桥参加毕业典礼的老毕业生们不会等到团聚年才重回学院。他们只是想回来时 就回来，会会老友，看看新朋友，并在榆树下品一杯鸡尾酒。这位老人回想起某个 夏日，当时他吃完午饭走向广场时，路遇一名新毕业的师弟，此人已经开怀畅饮了 不少那种鸡尾酒。当二人渐渐走近，新毕业的哥们亮出刚拿到的文凭，大喊一声 “受过上帝的教育！ ”
Even with an honorary Harvard doctorate in my hands, I know enough not to shout that across the Yard, but the University’s generosity does make me bold enough to say that over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States, and about what judges do when they apply it in deciding cases with constitutional issues. I’m going to draw on that experience in the course of the next few minutes, for it is as a judge that I have been given the honor to speak before you.
即使我手中有哈佛大学荣誉博士学位，我也清楚地知道，没必要向全校的人高 呼，但学校的宽容的确让我有足够的勇气站在这里说，以我过去19年在最高法院的经 历，我学到了一些关于美国宪法的知识，以及法官是如何运用这些宪法知识进行案件 的裁定。我很荣幸能以一名法官的身份，在接下来的几分钟里向你们讲述这些经历。
The occasion for our coming together like this aligns with the approach of two separate events on the judicial side of the national public life: the end of the Supreme Court’s term, with its quickened pace of decisions, and a confirmation proceeding for the latest nominee to fill a seat on the court. We will as a consequence be hearing and discussing a particular sort of criticism that is frequently aimed at the more controversial Supreme Court decisions： criticism that the court is making up the law, that the court is announcing constitutional rules that cannot be found in the Constitution, and that the court is engaging in activism to extend civil liberties. A good many of us, I，m sure a good many of us here, intuitively react that this sort of commentary tends to miss the mark. But we don’t often pause to consider in any detail the conceptions of the Constitution and of constitutional judging that underlie the critical rhetoric, or to compare them with the notions that lie behind our own intuitive responses. I‘m going to try to make some of those comparisons this afternoon.
今天在我们此欢聚一堂的时刻，也正是国家公共生活中两件与司法有关的大 事临近之时：伴随着审理案件速度的加快，最髙法院开庭期即将结束了；为填补离 职法官空缺而进行新的大法官提名的确认程序也接近尾声。结果就是，我们将不断 地听到或讨论到一种特别的批评，这种批评往往针对那些较具争议的最高法院的判 决：这些批评说法院在立法，他们所宣布的宪法条例在宪法中根本找不到，批评还 说法院正在涉足扩大公民自由的司法能动主义。我们当中有许多人，我肯定，今天 在场的许多人的直觉反应就是，这些评论往往是文不对题的。但是，我们通常不会停 下来去思考这些批评言辞下隐藏的宪法概念以及涉及宪法的判决，我们也不会把它们与我们自己直觉反应的概念进行比较。今天下午，我要试着来做些这方面的比较。
The charges of lawmaking and constitutional novelty seem to be based on an impression of the Constitution, and on a template for deciding constitutional claims， that go together something like this. A claim is made in court that the government is entitled to exercise a power, or an individual is entitled to claim the benefit of a right, that is set out in the terms of some particular provision of the Constitution. The claimant quotes the provision and provides evidence of facts that are said to prove the entitlement that is claimed. Once they have been determined, the facts on their face either do or do not support the claim. If they do, the court gives judgment for the claimant； if they don’t，judgment goes to the party contesting the claim. On this view, deciding constitutional cases should be a straightforward exercise of reading fairly and viewing facts objectively.
对立法和宪法更新方面的指责，似乎是基于对宪法的某种印象和审理涉宪案件 的某种模式，这两者结合在一起产生了此类批评。涉宪案件有时候是政府提起诉讼 说它有权行使某种权力，有时候是个人主张享有某种权益。原告援引这一条款，并 提供事实证据，以证明他所主张的那种权利。一旦所主张的权利被确定，就看这种 主张是否被支持。如果是，那么法院就判决给原告，如果不是，那么法院就判决给 被告。从这个角度来看，判决涉宪案件应该是一项很直接了当的工作而且是忠实于 宪法原文以及客观的既定事实。
There are, of course, constitutional claims that would be decided just about the way this fair reading model would have it. If one of today’s 21-year-old college graduates claimed a place on the ballot for one of the United States Senate seats open this year, the claim could be disposed of simply by showing the person’s age, quoting the constitutional provision that a senator must be at least 30 years old, and interpreting that requirement to forbid access to the ballot to someone who could not qualify to serve if elected. No one would be apt to respond that lawmaking was going on, or object that the age requirement did not say anything about ballot access. The fair reading model would describe pretty much what would happen. But cases like this do not usually come to court, or at least the Supreme Court. And for the ones that do get there, for the cases that tend to raise the national blood pressure, the fair reading model has only a tenuous connection to reality.
当然，确实有些涉宪案件是可以用这种忠于宪法原文的模式来判决的。如果今 天有位21岁的大学毕业生向法院提起诉讼要求参加今年的美国参议员竞选，对于这 种诉求只需简单地通过此人的年龄就可以被驳回。根据宪法规定，参议员的最低年 龄为30岁，并解释道这一要求是为了防止某些无法胜任的人获选。没有人会说这是 高院在制定法律，或者提出反对说年龄限制不是对于参选权的规定。运用忠实阅读宪法原文的模式可以得出这个案子的判决结果。但这种案子通常不会出现在法院， 至少不会出现在最髙法院。而那些在最高法院审理的案件往往会使整个国家绷紧神 经，忠实阅读宪法原文的判决模式很难在现实中使用。
Even a moment’s thought is enough to show why it is so unrealistic. The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees，like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches. These provisions cannot be applied like the requirement for 30-year-old senators; they call for more elaborate reasoning to show why very general language applies in some specific cases but not in others, and over time the various examples turn into rules that the Constitution does not mention.
只要稍加思索就可以明白为什么忠实阅读宪法原文的模式是不切实际的。宪法 中有相当多是特意设置的开放式保证，例如“正当程序原则”，“受法律平等保护 原则”，以及“免于不合理搜查的权力”等。这些宪法条文不能与“要求参议员必 须在30岁以上”这类的条款以同样的方式执行，它们需要更加详细的探究，说明为 什么同样的一句概括性的语句适用于某些案件，却不适用于另外一些案件；而且随 着时间的积累，各种判例就形成了宪法原文中没有提及的规则。
But this explanation hardly scratches the surface. The reasons that constitutional judging is not a mere combination of fair reading and simple facts extend way beyond the recognition that constitutions have to have a lot of general language in order to be useful over long stretches of time. Another reason is that the Constitution contains values that may well exist in tension with each other, not in harmony. Yet another reason is that the facts that determine whether a constitutional provision applies maybe very different from facts like a person’s age or the amount of the grocery bill; constitutional facts may require judges to understand the meaning that the facts may bear before the judges can figure out what to make of them. And this can be tricky. To show you what I’m getting at, I’ve picked two examples of what can really happen, two stories of two great cases. The two stories won’t，of course, give anything like a complete description either of the Constitution or of judging, but I think they will show how unrealistic the fair reading model can be.
不过这种解释还只是蜻蜓点水。其原因是，宪法审判不仅仅是忠实宪法原文和 简单的事实认定相结合，宪法必须用大量概括性的语言，以便在很长一段时间内都 能适用。还有一个原因是，宪法包含的各种价值观之间不一定能和谐共处，有可能 互相对立。再一个原因是，某些用来判定是否适用宪法的事实与诸如一个人的年龄 或收银条上的金额这些事实是迥然不同的；涉宪法案件中事实可能需要法官们事先 弄清楚他们想如何使用这些事实，先要理解这些事实所包含的意义。这点可能会比较令人费解。为了说明我的意思，我选了两个真实的案例，两个大案件的故事。当 然，这两个故事绝不是对宪法或审判的全部描述，但我认为它们将展现出忠实原文 的判决模式是如何的不切实际。
The first story is about what the Constitution is like. It’s going to show that the Constitution is no simple contract, not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language that a contract draftsman would try to avoid, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized，all together, all at once.
第一个故事是关于宪法是什么样的。它将表明，宪法不是简单的契约，并不是 因为它使用了相当多合同起草者会尽量避免的开放式语句；而是由于它的文字赋予 并许诺了太多美好的东西，而这些美好的东西又彼此冲突，不可能同时或者一次全 部实现。
The story is about a case that many of us here remember. It was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on June 26，1971，and is known as the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times and the Washington Post had each obtained copies of classified documents prepared and compiled by government officials responsible for conducting the Vietnam War. The newspapers intended to publish some of those documents, and the government sought a court order forbidding the publication.
这个故事中的案例，我们这里许多人肯定还能回忆起来。它是著名的“五角大 楼文件案”。1971年6月26日，这一案件在美国最高法院开庭辩论。《纽约时报》和 《华盛顿邮报》各获得了一份由负责指挥越战的政府官员准备并编制的机密文件副 本。报纸打算发表其中一些文件，而政府要求法院下令禁止发行。
The issue had arisen in great haste, and had traveled from trial courts to the Supreme Court, not over the course of months, but in a matter of days. The time was one of high passion, and the claim made by the United States was the most extreme claim known to the constitutional doctrines of freedom to speak and publish. The government said it was entitled to a prior restraint, an order forbidding publication in the first place，not merely one imposing a penalty for unlawful publication after the words are out. The argument included an exchange between a great lawyer appearing for the government and a great judge, and the colloquy between them was one of those instances of a grain of sand that reveals a universe.
这一事件发生的很突然，而且一般案子从初审法院到最高法院都需要数月，但 这个案子却在短短的数天内就从初审法院到了最高法院。事情发生的时间点正是公众情绪髙涨的时侯，而由美国政府所提出的诉讼要求又是对言论和出版自由宪法原 则的挑战最为极端的一例。政府表示，它有权预先禁止，即事先禁止出版，而不仅 仅是在非法出版行为做出之后再进行处罚。法庭辩论在一个为政府出庭辩护的伟大 律师和一个伟大的法官之间展开了，而他们之间的辩论正是知微见著的实例。
The great lawyer for the United States was a man who had spent many Commencement mornings in this Yard. He was Irwin Griswold, dean of the Law School for 21 years, who was serving a stint as solicitor general of the United States. The great judge who questioned the dean that day was Mr. Justice Black, the first of the New Deal justices, whom Justice Cardozo described as having one of the most brilliant legal minds he had ever met with. The constitutional provision on which their exchange centered was the First Amendment, which includes the familiar words that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Although that language by its literal terms forbade Congress from legislating to abridge free expression, the guarantees were understood to bind the whole government, and to limit what the president could ask a court to do. As for the remainder of the provision, though, Justice Black professed to read it literally. When it said there shall be no law allowed, it left no room for any exception; the prohibition against abridging freedom of speech and press was absolute. And in fairness to him，one must say that on their face the First Amendment clauses seem as clear as the requirement for 30-year-old senators, and that no guarantee of the Bill of Rights is more absolute in form.
那个为美国政府出庭辩护的大律师在这个校园里主持过多届毕业典礼。他就是 欧文格里斯沃尔德（Erwin Griswold),他担任哈佛法学院院长达21年，期间还担 任了一段时间的美国联邦总检察长。那天向格里斯沃尔德院长发问的那个伟大的法 官就是布莱克大法官（Mr. Justice Black)，他是罗斯福新政期任命的首位大法官，被 卡多佐大法官（Justice Cardozo)誉为他所见过的最杰出的法律人才之一。两者关于 宪法的交锋集中在第一修正案，包括大家耳熟能详的句子“国会不得制定任何法律 ……剥夺言论或新闻自由。”虽然从字面上看，第一修正案禁止国会通过立法剥夺 公民自由表达权，该项权利保证可以被理解为用来约束整个政府，并对总统可以要 求法院做的事情加以限制。而对于其余的条文，布莱克法官宣称也要从原文的字面 意思上解读。当宪法说不允许，就表明没有任何回旋的余地，禁止立法剥夺言论和出版自由这一要求是绝对的。为了体现对布莱克法官的公平，我们必须指出，第一 修正案的条文从字面上看就和要求参议员必须年满30岁的要求一样明确，没有其他 人权法案的权利保证形式比这一形式更加绝对的了。
But that was not the end of the matter for Dean Griswold. Notwithstanding the language, he urged the court to say that a restraint would be constitutional when publication threatened irreparable harm to the security of the United States, and he contended there was enough in the record to show just that; he argued that the intended publications would threaten lives, and jeopardize the process of trying to end the war and recover prisoners, and erode the government’s capacity to negotiate with foreign governments and through foreign governments in the future.
但是，格里斯沃尔德院长并没有就此打住。尽管第一修正案的文字表述已经如 此明确，他还是试图说服法院同意,当言论的发表会给美国的国家安全带来不可弥 补的损害时，禁止发表是符合宪法规定的。他指出历史上有足够的证据体现了这一 点；他论述道，两个报社打算发表的内容会危及生命，损害政府试图结束战争，接 回被俘将士的进程，并削弱政府未来与外国政府进行谈判的能力。
Justice Black responded that if a court could suppress publication when the risk to the national interest was great enough, the judges would be turned into censors. Dean Griswold said he did not know of any alternative. Justice Black shot back that respecting the First Amendment might be the alternative, and to that, Dean Griswold replied in words I cannot resist quoting：
法官布莱克回应说，如果当国家利益遭受损害的风险很大时，由法院出面禁 止发表，那么法官就会变成审查员。格里斯沃尔德院长说，他也想不出来还有其他 任何选项。布莱克法官马上反击道，尊重宪法第一修正案就是其他选项，针对这句 话，我实在忍不住要对格里斯沃尔德院长的回应在这里引述：
“The problem in this case，” he said, “is the construction of the First Amendment. “Now Mr, Justice, your construction of that is well-known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that “no law” does not mean “no law，” and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true.
他说道，“这个案子的问题就在于对宪法第一修正案的解释。”“法官大人，你对第一修正案的解释是众所周知的，我当然尊重。你说，不得立法的意思就是不得立法，这应该是显而易见的。法官大人，我只能说，对我来 说，同样显而易见的是“不得立法”并不等于“不得立法”，我将设法说服法庭， 我的观点是正确的。
“As Chief Justice Marshall said, so long ago, it is a Constitution we are interpreting.”
“首席大法官马歇尔（Chief Justice Marshall )很久以前也曾说过，宪法由我们来 解释……”
The government lost the case and the newspapers published, but Dean Griswold won his argument with Justice Black. To show, as he put it, that “no law” did not mean “no law，” Dean Griswold had pointed out that the First Amendment was not the whole Constitution. The Constitution also granted authority to the government to provide for the security of the nation, and authority to the president to manage foreign policy and command the military.
这个案子最终是政府败诉，报道发表了。但格里斯沃尔德院长却在与布莱克法 官的辩论中胜出。为了表明他所说的“不得立法”并不意味着“不得立法”，格里 斯沃尔德院长指出，宪法第一修正案不是宪法的全部。宪法还赋予政府权力，使其 提供国家的安全，并授权总统处理外交政策和指挥军队。
And although he failed to convince the court that the capacity to exercise these powers would be seriously affected by publication of the papers, the court did recognize that at some point the authority to govern that Dean Griswold invoked could limit the right to publish. The court did not decide the case on the ground that the words “no law” allowed of no exception and meant that the rights of expression were absolute. The court’s majority decided only that the government had not met a high burden of showing facts that could justify a prior restraint, and particular members of the court spoke of examples that might have turned the case around, to go the other way. Threatened publication of something like the D-Day invasion plans could have been enjoined; Justice Brennan mentioned a publication that would risk a nuclear holocaust in peacetime.
虽然他未能说服法庭,政府行使这些权力的能力将因为报纸文章的发表而受 到严重影响，法院也承认，在某些时候，为了保证格里斯沃尔德院长所提出来的政 府权力的行使，法院可以限制出版权。法院对该案作出裁定的依据并不是基于“不 得立法”的字面意思，即表示不允许有任何例外，也就是说表达的权利是绝对的。 持多数派意见的法官们的决定只是说，政府没有满足举证的重任，拿出事实证据来 为自己要求的禁止发表作出辩解，个别法官还在设想一些可以让政府赢得案子的情形。像诺曼底登陆计划这样的事情，如果报社要发表是会被禁止的；布伦南大法官 (Justice Brennan)还提到如果文章的发表可能会引起和平时期的核战争，那该文章 也可以禁止发表的。
Even the First Amendment, then，expressing the value of speech and publication in the terms of a right as paramount as any fundamental right can be, does not quite get to the point of an absolute guarantee. It fails because the Constitution has to be read as a whole, and when it is，other values crop up in potential conflict with an unfettered right to publish, the value of security for the nation and the value of the president’s authority in matters foreign and military. The explicit terms of the Constitution, in other words, can create a conflict of approved values, and the explicit terms of the Constitution do not resolve that conflict when it arises. The guarantee of the right to publish is unconditional in its terms, and in its terms the power of the government to govern is plenary. A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people，like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them， between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice. And choices like the ones that the justices envisioned in the Papers case make up much of what we call law.
可见，即使是体现了言论和出版自由是和任何基本权利一样至高无上的宪法第 一修正案，也不能达到绝对保证的程度。不能绝对保证是因为宪法必须作为一个整 体来解读，当作为一个整体解读时，其他价值观就会出现，与不受约束的言论与出 版自由发生潜在冲突，比如保护国家安全的权利，和总统处理外交和军事事务的权 力。换句话说，宪法的明文规定会造成各种被承认的价值观之间的冲突，而这种冲 突出现时，宪法的明文规定又解决不了这一问题。出版自由是宪法明文规定的无条 件保证，而政府行使宪法赋予的权力也是绝对的权利。选择往往是不可避免的，不 是因为语言是模糊的，而是因为宪法体现的是美国人民的愿望，就像大多数国家的 人民一样，我们总是希望鱼和熊掌兼得。我们想要秩序和安全，我们也要自由。此 外，我们还希望得到平等。我们的这些想要兼得的愿望会发生冲突，而当这种冲突 发生时，法院就不得不在鱼和熊掌之间作出选择。法院在作这种选择的时候需要的 不仅仅是对宪法原文的忠实阅读，必须决定哪一个价值在此时此地拥有更大的权利主张。而法官们在像“五角大楼文件案”中所做的选择形成的判例，也成了构成我 们所说的法律的一部分。
Let me ask a rhetorical question. Should the choice and its explanation be called illegitimate law making? Can it be an act beyond the judicial power when a choice must be made and the Constitution has not made it in advance in so many words? You know my answer. So much for the notion that all of constitutional law lies there in the Constitution waiting for a judge to read it fairly.
让我来做个反问。这种选择和对这种选择所作的解释，能被称为非法的重新立 法吗？当法脘必须作出一个选择，而宪法又没有预先予以明文规定的时候，这能称 得上是超越司法权的行为吗？大家知道我的回答。这种认为所有涉及宪法的法律都 在宪法原文中，只是等待一名法官来忠实的按字面解读的想法是颇有局限的。我们 先谈到此为止。
Now let me tell a second story, not one illustrating the tensions within constitutional law, but one showing the subtlety of constitutional facts. Again the story is about a famous case, and a good many of us here remember this one, too: Brown v. Board of Education from 1954，in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that racial segregation in public schools imposed by law was unconstitutional, as violating the guarantee of equal protection of the law.
现在让我来讲第二个故事，这个故事不是关于宪法范围内的各价值观之间的 冲突，而是显示出涉宪事实的微妙之处。同样这个故事也是关于一个著名案例， 这里很多人肯定也记得：1954年的“布朗诉教育委员会案”（Brown v. Board of Education)，最高法院一致认为法律规定的公立学校种族隔离是违宪的，它违反了 法律的“平等保护原则”。
Brown ended the era of separate-but-equal, whose paradigm was the decision in 1896 of the case called Plessy. Ferguson, where the Supreme Court had held it was no violation of the equal protection guarantee to require black people to ride in a separate railroad car that was physically equal to the car for whites. One argument offered in Plessy was that the separate black car was a badge of inferiority, to which the court majority responded that if black people viewed it that way，the implication was merely a product of their own minds. Sixty years later, Brown held that a segregated school required for black children was inherently unequal.
布朗案结束了分离但平等的时代，其模式是在1896年的普莱西诉弗格森(Plessy v. Ferguson) —案中确立的，在那个案子中最高法院的裁定是，要求黑人乘坐被隔离的车厢这一做法没有违反平等保护原则，因为黑人的车厢和白人的车厢从物理上来 说是同等的。普莱西案中也有法官提出的一个论点是，让黑人乘坐隔离的车厢是让 他们感到自卑的铭牌，但持多数意见的法官们回应道，如果黑人们这样认为，这种 感觉只是他们自己大脑里的产物。60年后，布朗案则认为，让黑人儿童去被隔离的 学校是一种内在的不平等。
For those whose exclusive norm for constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed，Brown must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision. Those who look to that model are not likely to think that a federal court back in 1896 should have declared legally mandated racial segregation unconstitutional. But if Plessy was not wrong, how is it that Brown came out so differently? The language of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws did not change between 1896 and 1954，and it would be hard to say that the obvious facts on which Plessy was based had changed, either. While Plessy was about railroad ears and Brown was about schools, that distinction was no great difference. Actually, the best clue to the difference between the cases is the dates they were decided, which I think lead to the explanation for their divergent results.
对于那些认为宪法审判只是忠实阅读宪法原文语句并运用到客观公正的事实上的 人来说，布朗案肯定要么是个彻底的错误，要么是一种诡异的判决。他们也不太可能 认为联邦法院在1896年就宣布这种法律授权的种族隔离行为是违宪的。但是，如果普 莱西案没有错的话，为什么布朗案的审判结果会如此截然不同呢？宪法中关于公民拥 有受平等法律保护的权利的语句在1896年至1954年间并没有改变，要i兑普莱西案中显 而易见的事实发生了改变，似乎也很难说得通。普莱西案是关于火车车厢，而布朗 案则是关于学校的，这没有太大区别。其实，两个案件之间的区别最好的解释是它 们判决的时代不同，我认为时代的不同可以很好的解释它们判决结果的不同。
As I’ve said elsewhere, the members of the Court in Plessy remembered the day when human slavery was the law in much of the land. To that generation, the formal equality of an identical railroad car meant progress. But the generation in power in 1954 looked at enforced separation without the revolting background of slavery to make it look unexceptional by contrast. As a consequence, the judges of 1954 found a meaning in segregating the races by law that the majority of their predecessors in 1896 did not see. That meaning is not captured by descriptions of physically identical schools or physically identical railroad cars. The meaning of facts arises elsewhere, and its judicial perception turns on the experience of the judges, and on their ability to think from a point of view different from their own. Meaning comes from the capacity .to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page. And when the judges in 1954 read the record of enforced segregation it carried only one possible meaning: It expressed a judgment of inherent inferiority on the part of the minority race. The judges who understood the meaning that was apparent in 1954 would have violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution if they had not held the segregation mandate unconstitutional.
我在其他场合也曾经这样说过，在普莱西案中，法院法官们想到的是，曾经在 美国的很多州，法律还允许奴隶的存在。在他们那个时代，黑人享有和白人同样的火车车厢已经意味着进步了。然而到了 1954年，法官们已经没有了奴隶制这样的强 烈对照背景，法律强制的种族隔离就不是等闲之事了。结果，1954年的法官们从种 族隔离中看到了某种意义，而在1896年持多数人意见的前辈们却并没有看到。那个 意义并不包含在物理上相同的学校，或物理上相同的车厢的描述中。这些事实所包 含的意义源自其他方面，其司法感知取决于法官们的经验，以及他们从不同观点角 度来进行思考的能力。需要法官们的运用自己的洞察力去解读这些并没有通过白纸 黑字简单而客观的书写出来的意义。所以当1954年的大法官们了解到了法律强制的 种族隔离行为，这个事实只包含了一种可能的意义：这种做法传达出了对少数族裔 人先天低人一等的判断。法官们只要认识到这点在1954年显而易见的意义，又没有 把这种种族隔离政策判断为违宪，那就可以说背叛了他们维护宪法的誓言。
Again, a rhetorical question. Did the judges of 1954 cross some limit of legitimacy into law making by stating a conclusion that you will not find written in the Constitution? Was it activism to act based on the current meaning of facts that at a purely objective level were about the same as Plessy’s facts 60 years before? Again, you know my answer. So much for the assumption that facts just lie there waiting for an objective judge to view them.
让我再做一次反问。1954年的大法官们有没有越过合法性的红线，用你们在宪 法中根本找不到条文的书面结论来立新法呢？基于事实的当下意义来判案，是不是 司法能动主义呢？要知道该事实与60年前普莱西案的事实在纯粹客观的角度来看是 完全一样的。同样，你知道我的回答。这种认为事实就在那里，只是等待一个公正 的法官来察看的概念是很局限的。
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