Cardozo, Benjamin Nathan

AuthorJeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 244

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo was a New York state court judge, an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and an influential legal scholar.

Cardozo was born May 24, 1870, in New York City, the youngest son in a family of six children. His parents were descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who had settled in New York before the Revolutionary War. His father, ALBERT CARDOZO, was a trial court judge who was forced to resign his seat because of allegations, which were never proved, of improper conduct involving the then corrupt New York City government. Cardozo was tutored during his early life by well known clergyman and teacher Horatio Alger and entered Columbia College at the age of fifteen. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1889 and a master's degree in 1890, then enrolled at Columbia Law School. He was granted admission to the New York state bar in 1891 without having received his law degree.

After completing his legal training and passing the bar examination, Cardozo began practicing appellate law with his brother. He soon became a prominent practitioner in his own right in the fields of corporate and COMMERCIAL LAW. He often acted as consultant to other law firms, writing appeal briefs for other lawyers and appearing frequently before the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. His extensive appellate experience led him to write his first book, Jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, published in 1903. In addition, judges often appointed him to act as referee in complicated matters of commercial law, one of his areas of specialty.

In 1913, after twenty-three years in private practice, Cardozo was nominated and elected as a judge on the New York Supreme Court, the state's trial-level bench. Only six weeks later, he was designated to serve temporarily as an associate judge on the Court of Appeals. He remained a temporary judge of the Court of Appeals until 1917, when he was appointed to fill a vacant and permanent seat, and in 1926 he was elected chief judge.

"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

During his tenure on the Court of Appeals, Cardozo made his mark as an influential and celebrated jurist and moved the New York court to the forefront of the nation's state courts. With respect to TORT LAW, the court under Cardozo greatly expanded the protection offered to individuals injured by the NEGLIGENCE of others. In MACPHERSON V. BUICK MOTOR CO., 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050 (1916), perhaps Cardozo's most influential tort opinion, the court held Buick liable for the negligent construction of a defective wheel that injured a purchaser who had bought the car not from Buick but from an...

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