Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZOIt 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.
More Benjamin Cardozo Quotes
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Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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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Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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.
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Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
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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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO -
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 -
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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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.
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Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
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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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Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
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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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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.
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The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO