An Essay on Discretion

Few terms have as important a place in legal discourse as "discretion."Despite the importance of the term, however, those who use it do not agree on its meaning.It is universally accepted that discretion has something to do with choice; beyond this, the consensus breaks down.If there is little agreement about the meaning of discretion, there is even less agreement about its desirability.Indeed, participants in the judicial process and observers of that process take a schizophrenic view of discretion.Sometimes they praise it and sometimes they execrate it.This article is an essay on the meaning of discretion, the conflicting attitudes people have toward it, and the reasons why their feelings about it will probably always remain ambivalent.Although this article primarily focuses on the law, the broader context is a political one, because discretion relates to the way that people interact with each other in a political context.Discretion involves power relationships and the ways that people work out these relationships in an ongoing political system.