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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Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body.
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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.
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The final cause of law is the welfare of society.
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The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.
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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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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
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Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
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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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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.
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The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.
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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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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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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO