The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. Benjamin N. Cardozo More Quotes by Benjamin N. Cardozo More Quotes From Benjamin N. Cardozo I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery and reread with due contrition. Benjamin N. Cardozo good me experience faith 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 judges law men facts The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities. Benjamin N. Cardozo eyes see martyr prophet Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Benjamin N. Cardozo slow she storm justice 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 judges sense constitution law Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. Benjamin N. Cardozo condition every freedom expression 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 blessings cry men life 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 lawyers new law knowledge There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress. Benjamin N. Cardozo dress jurisprudence literature art Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more. Benjamin N. Cardozo even more technique inspiration Law never is, but is always about to be. Benjamin N. Cardozo about never always law Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience. Benjamin N. Cardozo prophecy honest experience poor The risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed. Benjamin N. Cardozo perceived defines risk duty Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions. Benjamin N. Cardozo bar membership conditions privilege I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life. Benjamin N. Cardozo existing take law life 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 question answer strong artist 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 judge day truth work 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 direction thought you action 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 result great law justice 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 wrong habit limits law
