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“As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

On types of judicial writing, in "Law and Literature" in Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses (1931), p. 10
Other writings

Home , Search , Memory , Time

“My analysis of the judicial process comes then to this, and little more: logic, and history, and custom, and utility, and the accepted standards of right conduct, are the forces which singly or in combination shape the progress of the law. Which of these forces dominate depends largely upon the comparative importance or value of the social interests that will be thereby promoted or impaired. … The most fundamental social interest is that law shall be uniform and impartial. … Uniformity ceases to be a good when it becomes uniformity of oppression.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 112
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Law , History , Dependency

“If you ask how he is to know when one interest outweighs another, I can only answer that he must get his knowledge just as the legislator gets it, from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 113
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Life , Knowledge , Study

“Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Ultramares Corp. v. Touche, 255 N.Y. 170, 179, 174 N.E. 441, 444 (N.Y. 1931)
Judicial opinions

Fraud , Knowledge

“Expediency may tip the scales when arguments are nicely balanced.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Woolford Realty Co., Inc., v. Rose, 286 U.S. 319, 330 (1932)
Judicial opinions

“What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

Men , Faith

“Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 132
Other writings, The Growth of the Law (1924)

“I am ready to concede that the rule of adherence to precedent, though it ought not to be abandoned, ought to be in some degree relaxed. I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. … That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Pages 150-51
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Justice , Law , Thinking , Sense

“Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 327, (1937)
Judicial opinions

Freedom

“They do things better with logarithms.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Commenting on the uncertainty of the law.
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

“Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Richard v. Credit Suisse, 242 N.Y. 346, 351 (N.Y. 1926)
Judicial opinions

“There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them; and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Altruist in Politics (1889)

Life , Men , World , Evil

“I was much troubled in spirit, in my first years upon the bench, to find how trackless was the ocean on which I had embarked. I sought for certainty. I was oppressed and disheartened when I found that the quest for it was futile. I was trying to reach land, the solid land of fixed and settled rules, the paradise of a justice that would declare itself by tokens plainer and more commanding than its pale and glimmering reflections in my own vacillating mind and conscience.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 165-166.
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Justice

“Bills of rights give assurance to the individual of the preservation of his liberty. They do not define the liberty they promise.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

“The judicial process, as was said at the outset of these lectures, is a process of search and comparison, and little else.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 163
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Search

“Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

In re Rouss, 221 N.Y. 81, 84 (N.Y. 1917)
Judicial opinions

“Again and again, the altruist has arisen in politics, has bidden us share with others the product of our toil, and has proclaimed the communistic dogma as the panacea for our social ills. So today, amid the buried hopes and buried projects of the past, the doctrine of communism still lives in the minds of men. Under stress of misfortune, or in dread of tyranny, it is still preached in modern times as Plato preached it in the world of the Greeks.
Yet it is indeed doubtful whether, in the history of mankind, a doctrine was ever taught more impracticable or more false to the principles it professes than this very doctrine of communism. In a world where self-interest is avowedly the ruling motive, it seeks to establish at once an all-reaching and all-controlling altruism. In a world where every man is pushing and fighting to outstrip his fellows, it would make him toil with like vigor for their common welfare. In a world where a man's activity is measured by the nearness of reward, it would hold up a prospective recompense as an equal stimulant to labor. … In the future, when the remoteness of his reward shall have weakened the laborer's zeal, we shall be able to judge more fairly of the blessings that the communist offers.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Altruist in Politics (1889)

Men , World , Hope , History

“Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545 (N.Y. 1928), describing the fiduciary duties inherent in a partnership.
Judicial opinions

Behavior

“The state in commissioning its judges has commanded them to judge, but neither in constitution nor in statute has it formulated a code to define the manner of their judging. The pressure of society invests new forms of conduct in the minds of the multitude with the sanction of moral obligation, and the same pressure working upon the mind of the judge invests them finally through his action with the sanction of the law.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

p, 125
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

Law

“Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Wagner v. International Railway Co., 232 N.Y. 13 (N.Y. 1926), setting forth the rescue doctrine which holds negligent parties liable not only for injury to the victim, but to those who attempt to rescue the victim.
Judicial opinions