Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ California is a mining state, and mines offer the most striking temptations to people in a hurry to get rich. Mines generally are represented by stocks. Stock is convenient for purposes of speculation, because of the ease with which it is transferred from hand to hand, as well as for other reasons. If stopping the purchase and sale of stocks on margin would stop the gambling which it was desired to prevent, it was proper for the people of California to go no farther in what they forbade. ”

“ While the courts must exercise a judgment of their own, it by no means is true that every law is void which may seem to the judges who pass upon it excessive, unsuited to its ostensible end, or based upon conceptions of morality with which they disagree. ”

“ Of course, if a man can buy on margin he can launch into a much more extended venture than where he must pay the whole price at once. If he pays the whole price he gets the purchased article, whatever its worth may turn out to be. ”

“ If the state thinks that an admitted evil cannot be prevented except by prohibiting a calling or transaction not in itself necessarily objectionable, the courts cannot interfere, unless, in looking at the substance of the matter, they can see that it 'is a clear, unmistakable infringement of rights secured by the fundamental law.' Booth v. ”

“ It is said that it unduly limits the liberty of adult persons in making contracts which concern only themselves, and cuts down the value of a class of property that often must be disposed of under contracts of the prohibited kind if it is to be disposed of to advantage, thus depriving persons of liberty and property without due process of law, and that it unjustifiably discriminates against property of that class, while other familiar objects of speculation, such as cotton or grain, are not touched, thus depriving persons of the equal protection of the laws. ”

“ Therefore it may be held hereafter that ordinary contracts for the sale of stocks on margin are not legitimate transactions, and it would not be safe for us to take the words in any other than their literal meaning, or to assume in advance of a decision that they will be taken in a narrow sense. In this case the jury were instructed broadly to find for the plaintiff if he had paid any money to the defendants as a margin for the purchase of stock of a corporation, and this instruction was sustained. ”

“ The Sunday laws, no doubt, would be sustained by a bench of judges, even if every one of them thought it superstitious to make any day holy Or, to take cases where opinion has moved in the opposite direction, wagers may be declared illegal without the aid of statute, or lotteries forbidden by express enactment, although at an earlier day they were thought pardonable at least. ”