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 CARDOZORest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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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 CARDOZO -
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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The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
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Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.
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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 CARDOZO -
Law never is, but is always about to be.
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History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 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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Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO