William O. Douglas

“ If we grant relief, we will have undone the wrong which our own delay made possible. We have no way of knowing what other measures may be available to relieve petitioner of the stigma of the other felonies. Only if we were certain (as we are not) that there are or will be none could we fail to give him relief against the wrong done here by the processes of the law. ”

“ There is no remedy which he can claim as a matter of right, unless it is this one. I cannot therefore be party to turning him from this Court empty-handed.
Any judgment nunc pro tunc indulges in a fiction. But it is a useful one, advancing the ends of justice. A man who claims to be unlawfully in the custody of X is not required to start all over again if X has died and Y has been substituted in X's place. ”

“ As Justice Holmes once said, 'To say that a ship has committed a tort is merely a shorthand way of saying that you have decided to deal with it as if it had committed one, because some man has committed one in fact.' Tyler v. ”