In criminal cases, he was reversed 20 percent of the time, compared with an overall reversal rate from his court of roughly 15 percent in 2006. But in civil cases, his 24 percent reversal rate compared favorably with the overall rate of roughly 30 percent.

Last year, when the Justice Department sought his permission to force a mentally troubled defendant to take psychotropic drugs to render her competent to stand trial, Judge Mukasey expressed a visceral disgust for the idea, even though the Supreme Court had endorsed it.

“It is not inappropriate to recall in plain terms,” he wrote, “what the government seeks to do here, which necessarily involves physically restraining defendant so that she can be injected with mind-altering drugs.”

“There was a time when what might be viewed as an even lesser invasion of a defendant’s person — pumping his stomach to retrieve evidence — was said to ‘shock the conscience’ and invite comparison with ‘the rack and the screw,’ ” he added, quoting from a 1952 Supreme Court decision.

His writing was consistently cogent, lucid and self-assured, owing something to George Orwell, a hero of his. Indeed, Judge Mukasey kept a framed photograph of Orwell in his chambers.

“He is a particular idol of mine for his clear writing and complete disdain for cant,” Judge Mukasey told a reporter for The Financial Times in 1989, not long after becoming a judge. “I try to recognize when some spongy abstraction is trying to cover up an excuse for thought or analysis.”

His decisions almost always start with an exceptionally detailed account of the facts, often coupled with a keen awareness of how hard it is to know anything for sure.