Benjamin Cardozo
Benjamin Cardozo
Benjamin Nathan Cardozowas an American jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals and later as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Cardozo is remembered for his significant influence on the development of American common law in the 20th century, in addition to his philosophy and vivid prose style. Cardozo served on the Supreme Court six years, from 1932 until his death in 1938. Many of his landmark decisions were delivered during his eighteen-year tenure on the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSupreme Court Justice
Date of Birth24 May 1870
CountryUnited States of America
There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.
Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
Law never is, but is always about to be.
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.