Schmidt illustrated this lesson with a story from his clerkship with Chief Justice Earl Warren. The young Schmidt, fresh from law school, pointed out that the Supreme Court's obscenity decisions were constitutionally indefensible — it was impossible to define what was illegal without catching Shakespeare and Renaissance artists in the net. Chief Justice Warren exploded, turning red in the face: 'I'll tell you what I think. If I caught one of those [expletive] selling that [expletive] to my daughter, I'd kill him with my bare hands. Now get out of here and stop wasting my time.' Schmidt said he still cringed thinking about that moment forty-five years later. The lesson was not that the Chief Justice was right on the constitutional question — Schmidt still believed he wasn't — but that even when you are certain you are correct, there may be perspectives and passions you have failed to account for. Certainty can blind you to the complexity of a situation.