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No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.

Benjamin Cardozo

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Judging Knights Roaming
We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Finding Illusion Mind Peace
Justice, though due to the accused, is due the accuser also. The concept of fairness cannot be strained till it is narrowed to a filament. We are to keep our balance true.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Balance Fairness Justice
The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Law Limitation Running
Law never is, but is always about to be.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Always Law never
The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Age Constitution Significance
It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, or practical expediency, and not in rules of logic.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Justice Mind Ordinary
Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Honesty Honor Sensitive
Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Errors Growth Ingredient
The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng. Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Eternity Eye Prophet
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Inspiration Inspirational Technique
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Honest Poor Substitutes
No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Issue Judicial Raise Sysdtem
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Done Revision Tasks
What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Gain Honesty Men
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Expression Form Freedom

No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.

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No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.

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Popular Authors

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