ABSTRACT
I have spent my life in practising the law and helping to administer public and private affairs. I have thus had the chance to observe and even to take part in the making of policy; and since I retired from these activities sufficiently to reflect on them, I have tried to understand them-so far with very limited success. The more I think about the process, the stranger it seems. And yet it is obviously important, not only because we all suffer or benefit from the decisions of those who control our destinies but also because we all do it. The behavior of boards of directors, cabinets and courts of law displays in a conve niently explicit form some of the commonest workings of the individual mind. I begin by explaining what seem to me to be the central enigmas. Then I provide some examples which will, I hope, make them clearer. Finally I speculate on the growing points of psychological knowledge, which may in time make these riddles less puzzling than they seem to me now.
