“Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgement. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful and before which even well-settled principles of law will bend.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes (US Supreme Court) in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-401 (1904).