What the lawyers of our day most need, while descending from the clear heights of legal principle to the vale below on a fast-whirling avalanche of decisions, is to be made cognizant, before it is too late, of the law of the motion of the avalanche: in order to strike uppermost when it breaks, instead of being crushed and ground to powder beneath. Unhappily, most do not perceive, at present, that the avalanche is ever to break, or ever to stop, or ever to turn. If Scripture might be quoted in a law-book, the author
would say: He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear. This hint is meant to be read only by those who have ears.
J. P. Bishop, Commentaries on the Law of Criminal Procedure, s. 413