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 CARDOZOWhat 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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
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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.
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
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The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.
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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.
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The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.
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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.
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In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity – please observe, a plodding mediocrity – for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
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I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
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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.
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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.
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The validity of a tax depends upon its nature, and not upon its name.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO