Benjamin N. Cardozo: Mind

“We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is an illusion.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Pages 66 http://books.google.com/books?id=LGLuAAAAMAAJ&q=%22We+seek+to+find+peace+of+mind+in+the+word+the%22&pg=PA66#v=onepage – 67 http://books.google.com/books?id=LGLuAAAAMAAJ&q=%22formula+the+ritual+The+hope+is+an+illusion%22&pg=PA67#v=onepage
Other writings, The Growth of the Law (1924)
Context: Magic words and incantations are as fatal to our science as they are to any other. Methods, when classified and separated, acquire their true bearing and perspective as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves. We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is an illusion.

Peace , Hope

“A judge is to give effect in general not to his own scale of values, but to the scale of values revealed to him in his readings of the social mind. … Objective tests may fail him, or may be confused as to bewilder. He must then look within himself.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

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

Reading

“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

“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

“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

“The defendant styles herself "a creator of fashions." Her favor helps a sale. Manufacturers of dresses, millinery and like articles are glad to pay for a certificate of her approval. The things which she designs, fabrics, parasols and what not, have a new value in the public mind when issued in her name. She employed the plaintiff to help her to turn this vogue into money.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, 222 N.Y. 88, 91; 118 N.E. 214 (N.Y. 1917). This opening paragraph has been debated among legal practitioners, some of whom take its tone to be a sly rebuke by Cardozo of a profession which he considered to have an exaggerated influence.
Judicial opinions

Money , Fashion , Help

“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