Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Hand, Billings Learned

Learned Hand served as a U.S. district court judge from 1909 to 1924 and on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 1924 to 1951. Although he was a great and respected legal figure, he was never appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hand cannot be classified as a liberal or conservative because he did not allow his personal biases to affect his judicial positions. He was careful to base his decisions on public policy and laws as he understood them, and he did not believe it was the court's job to create public policy. To Hand's way of thinking, human values are relative. Although one value—such as protecting young people from obscenity—may prevail in a certain case, it might not prevail in another. And he felt that the role of court decisions should be to provide realistic guidelines on which to base future decisions.

Hand was born January 27, 1872, in Albany, New York. His was a distinguished family, with both his...