Report No. 95
3.34. Complexity of the issues.-
As society becomes complex, the issues that come up for constitutional adjudication will also tend to become complex. The Court may become immersed in the "travail of society"-a phrase aptly used by Pekelis.1 This means that much more will be demanded of the law, because the public expects much more of it. Judges should therefore have adequate time and ease of mind for research, reflection and consideration. In reaching judgments, they need time for critical review when draft judgments are prepared: and they need further time for clarification and revision in the light of all that has gone before. In one of his dissenting judgments, Mr. Justice Frankfurter said, "The far-reaching and delicate problems that call for the ultimate judgment of the nation's highest tribunal require vigour of thought and high effort and their conservation, even for the ablest of Judges."2
1. Alexander Pekelis The Case for a Jurisprudence of Welfare, in Konvits (Ed.), Law and Social Action, 1, 40, cited by A.S. Miller Supreme Court: Myth and Reality, p. 195.
2. Dick v. N.Y. Life Ins. Co., (1959) 359 US 437: 3 L Ed 2nd 935 (948) (Frankfurter, J. dissenting).
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