Quotes by Benjamin Cardozo

Benjamin Cardozo

American lawyer and jurist

Lived from: 1870 - 1938

Quotes 1 till 20 of 33.

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  • 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 Cardozo
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  • Bills of rights give assurance to the individual of the preservation of his liberty. They do not define the liberty they promise.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Danger invites rescue.... The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
    Judicial opinions
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
    Judicial opinions Roberts v. New York, 295 U.S. 264, 278 (1935).
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
    Judicial opinions Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 327, (1937).
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • If the nature of a thing is such that it is reasonably certain to place life and limb in peril when negligently made, it is then a thing of danger. Its nature gives warning of the consequences to be expected. If to the element of danger there is added knowledge that the thing will be used by persons other than the purchaser, and used without new tests, then, irrespective of contract, the manufacturer of this thing of danger is under a duty to make it carefully.
    MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • 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 Cardozo
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  • Immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states.
    Palko v. Connecticut
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • In law, as in every other branch of knowledge, the truths given by induction tend to form the premises for new deductions. The lawyers and the judges of successive generations do not repeat for themselves the process of verification any more than most of us repeat the demonstrations of the truths of astronomy or physics.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • It is well enough to say that we shall be consistent, but consistent with what?... The origins of the rule? The course and tendency of development? With logic or philosophy? With the fundamental conceptions of jurisprudence? All these loyalties are possible. All have sometimes prevailed.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • 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.
    Lecture at Yale University Law School (1923)
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
    Judicial opinions Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545 (N.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • Of that freedom [freedom of thought and speech] one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
    Palko v. Connecticut
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • Our course of advance... is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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  • The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with the Constitution, overrides the law of judges. In this sense, judge-made law is secondary and subordinate to the law that is made by legislators.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.
    ― Benjamin Cardozo
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What are the most famous quotes from Benjamin Cardozo?

The two most famous quotes from Benjamin Cardozo are:

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

When did Benjamin Cardozo live?

Benjamin Cardozo was born in 1870 and died in the year 1938.