Consistency can be foolish

Every so often in my current job one of the judges will make my day by writing or quoting something mildly interesting. So here is something I read today, by Justice Fryberg of the Supreme Court of Queensland:

Those passages demonstrate that what gives rise to a sense of injustice is unjustifiable discrepancy, and what is required for justice is reasonable consistency. Consistency for its own sake or to satisfy a bureaucratic desire for national neatness is not a proper objective of sentencing. Ralph Waldo Emersen wrote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Emerson R, "Self-reliance" in Essays: First Series, Fraser, London, 1841, cited in Spigelman J "Consistency and Sentencing" (2008) 82 ALJ 450.