Benjamin N. Cardozo: In-Laws

Benjamin N. Cardozo was United States federal judge. Explore interesting quotes on in-laws.
Benjamin N. Cardozo: 104   quotes 0   likes

“The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, 222 N.Y. 88, 91; 118 N.E. 214 (N.Y. 1917)
Judicial opinions
Context: The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view to-day. A promise may be lacking, and yet the whole writing may be "instinct with an obligation," imperfectly expressed. If that is so, there is a contract.

Law

“The reconciliation of the irreconcilable, the merger of antitheses, the synthesis of opposites, these are the great problems of the law…”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
Context: The reconciliation of the irreconcilable, the merger of antitheses, the synthesis of opposites, these are the great problems of the law... We have the claims of stability to be harmonized with those of progress. We are to reconcile liberty with equality, and both of them with order. The property rights of the individual we are to respect, yet we are not to press them to the point at which they threaten the welfare or the security of the many. We must preserve to justice its universal quality, and yet leave to it the capacity to be individual and particular.<!-- p. 4-5

Law , Problem

“Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Berkey v. Third Avenue Railway, 244 N.Y. 84, 94, 155 N.E. 58, 61 (N.Y. 1926). Sometimes misquoted as referring to "figures of speech" rather than metaphors, or with other minor variations.
Judicial opinions
Context: The whole problem of the relation between parent and subsidiary corporations is one that is still enveloped in the mists of metaphor. Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it. We say at times that the corporate entity will be ignored when the parent corporation operates a business through a subsidiary which is characterized as an 'alias' or a 'dummy.'... Dominion may be so complete, interference so obtrusive, that by the general rules of agency the parent will be a principal and the subsidiary an agent.

Law

“The curse of this fluidity, of an ever shifting approximation, is one the law must bear, or other curses yet more dreadful will be invited in exchange.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Pages 67 – 68
Other writings, The Growth of the Law (1924)
Context: I do not underrate the yearning for mechanical and formal tests. They are possible and useful in zones upon the legal sphere. The pain of choosing is the pain of marking off such zones from others. It is a pain we must endure, for uniformity of method will carry us upon the rocks. The curse of this fluidity, of an ever shifting approximation, is one the law must bear, or other curses yet more dreadful will be invited in exchange.

Law

“Liberty in the most literal sense is the negation of law for law is restraint, and the absence of restraint is anarchy. On the other hand, anarchy by destroying restraint would leave liberty the exclusive possession of the strong or the unscrupulous.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

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

Law , Sense , Strong

“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

“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

“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

“It comes down to this. There are certain forms of conduct which at any given place and epoch are commonly accepted under the combined influence of reason, practice and tradition, as moral or immoral. … Law accepts as the pattern of its justice the morality of the community whose conduct it assumes to regulate. In saying this, we are not to blind ourselves to the truth that uncertainty is far from banished. Morality is not merely different in different communities. Its level is not the same for all the component groups within the same community. A choice must still be made between one group standard and another. We have still to face the problem, at which one of these levels does the social pressure become strong enough to convert the moral norm into a jural one? All that we can say is that the line will be higher than the lowest level of moral principle and practice, and lower than the highest. The law will not hold the crowd to the morality of saints and seers. It will follow, or strive to follow, the principle and practice of the men and women of the community whom the social mind would rank as intelligent and virtuous.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

Women , Men , Truth , Justice

“We like to picture to ourselves the field of law as accurately mapped and plotted. We draw our little lines, and they are hardly down before we blur them. As in time and space, so here. Divisions are working hypotheses, adopted for convenience. … So also the duty of a judge becomes itself a question of degree, and he is a useful judge or a poor one as he estimates the measure accurately or loosely. He must balance all his ingredients, his philosophy, his logic, his analogies, his history, his customs, his sense of right, and all the rest, and adding a little here and taking out a little there, must determine, as wisely as he can, which weight shall tip the scales.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Page 161
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Law , History , Question , Sense