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Reply - Justice Albie Sachs 43
argument. We do not always cite the legal scholarship that influences
us — there is a degree of intellectual seepage and osmosis that doesn’t
always respect copyright — but academic contributions often
irreversibly enter our brains and affect our legal imaginations in
subtle and lasting ways, especially when presented by articulate and
‘passionate’ counsel for amici.
In my view, if the debates involving judges and scholars that led
to this book are anything to go by, dialogue between the judiciary and
the academic world is likely to become increasingly fruitful in the
years to come. US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, whom I love
to quote, sardonically remarked that the ‘Court does not have the last
word because it is infallible. It is infallible because it has the last
word.’ We judges have to acknowledge, however, that the last word
on the infallibility of the judges themselves will lie with the academic
critics.
O dialogo continua! Long may the dialogue continue!