Quotes by Benjamin N. Cardozo

Benjamin N. Cardozo

American lawyer and jurist

Lived from: 1870 - 1938

Born: 24 may 1870 Died: 9 july 1938

Quotes 1 till 16 of 16.

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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 judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • The outstanding truths of life, the great and unquestioned phenomena of society, are not to be argued away as myths and vagaries when they do not fit within our little moulds. If necessary, we must remake the moulds.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • 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
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  • There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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  • To the question how one kind of labor can be measured against another, how the labor of the artisan can be measured against the labor of the artist, how the labor of the strong can be measured against the labor of the weak, the communists can give no answer.
    ― Benjamin N. Cardozo
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What are the most famous quotes from Benjamin N. Cardozo?

The two most famous quotes from Benjamin N. Cardozo are:

  • "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."
  • "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."

When did Benjamin N. Cardozo live?

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