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.
Interpretation
Judges often rely on a combination of history, tradition, and an inherent understanding of justice to guide their decisions.
This quote emphasizes the complexities judges face when interpreting the law. Cardozo suggests that beyond the written statutes, judges must draw upon various influences, such as historical precedent, societal values, and an intrinsic sense of justice, to navigate their judgments effectively, especially in challenging cases.
In practice
Quoting this during a legal seminar to highlight the philosophical aspects of judgment.
Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion.
The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with the Constitution, overrides the law of judges. In this sense, judge-made law is secondary and subordinate to the law that is made by legislators.
There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them, and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion.
Law never is, but is always about to be.
The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.
In law, as in every other branch of knowledge, the truths given by induction tend to form the premises for new deductions. The lawyers and the judges of successive generations do not repeat for themselves the process of verification any more than most of us repeat the demonstrations of the truths of astronomy or physics.
I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.
It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?" Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war
Do you believe you can know yourselves if you don't somehow con- struct yourselves? Or that I can know you if I don't construct you in my way? And can you know me if I don't construct you in my way? We can know only what we succeed in giving form to.
I hate to take compromises with a racing car. The more standard a car is, the more compromises you have to take.
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