Decision-making

Imposing outsiders' rules to supersede insiders' understanding and flexibility is inefficient use of knowledge. The Supreme Court rejected a prescreening panel that would have reduced its work load. According to justice Brennan, "flexibility would be lost" in an "inherently subjective" process with "intangible factors" that are "more a matter of 'feel' than of precisely ascertainable facts," and which involve a "delicate interplay" of "discretionary forces." The tragedy is that he apparently considered this to be an institutional peculiarity of the Supreme Court, rather than a pervasive fact of decision making in general. Because this is what the Court has done to other institutions across the country. Constitutional guarantees encumber the State precisely so that the State may not encumber the citizen. —Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions