Primary Source: Benjamin N. Cardozo; Nature of the Judicial Process (1921).
Secondary Source: Lief H. Carter, Thomas F. Burke; Reason in Law (9 ed 2016), p. vii (before the Table of Contents).
What is it that I do when I decide a case? To what sources of information do I appeal for guidance? In what proportions do I permit them to contribute to the result? In what proportions ought they to contribute? If a precedent is applicable, when do I refuse to follow it? If no precedent is applicable, how do I reach the rule that will make a precedent for the future? If I am seeking logical consistency, the symmetry of the legal structure, how far shall I seek it? At what point shall the quest be halted by some discrepant custom, by some consideration of the social wel- fare, by my own or the common standards of justice and morals? Into that strange compound which is brewed daily in the caldron of the courts, all these ingredients enter in varying proportions. I am not concerned to inquire whether judges ought to be allowed to brew such a compound at all. I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life. There, before us, is the brew. [1.] Not a judge on the bench but has had a hand in the making.
The context implies 1 to mean:
- Not a judge on the bench has NOT had a hand in the making [of law].
= 3. Every such judge has had such a hand.
But comparing 1 with 2 evokes this question: how does but mean NOT?
The above published in 1921, I recognise this syntax's possible obsolescence.
P.S.: The polyfunctionality of 'but' has troubled me: ELU, Linguistics.