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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

Benjamin Cardozo

Consequences cannot alter statutes, but may help to fix their meaning.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Helping May Statutes
I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Judging Law Reality
Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Honest Poor Substitutes
With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Example Hands Humility
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
Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Destructive Unchecked Unrelieved
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Decision Justice Taken
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
Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Choices Inaction
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Done Revision Tasks
The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Degrees Differences Real
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.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Equality Erosion Liberty
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
History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Illuminating Past
Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.
BENJAMIN CARDOZO

Opinion Significance Source

There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

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There are vogues and fashions in jurisprudence as in literature and art and dress.

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Popular Authors

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