Andrew L. Kaufman

Cardozo, by Andrew L. Kaufman (read 14 Jan 2017) This 1998 biography by a Harvard law school professor Is a model work and tells very well of the interesting life and legal career Cardozo, who was born in 1870 and died on July 9, 1938. He went to Columbia law school--though did not actually receive a degree therefrom after completing the third year--and was a highly successful lawyer . He was appointed to New York state's highest court in 1914 and served thereon till 1932 when he was appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court. All his famous cases, so familiar to law school students, such as MacPherson v. Buick, Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co. and Palko v. Connecticut, are discussed with verve and insight. Some of the discussion of lesser cases was a bit dry but mainly the book will hold the interest of any lawyer or law student. I do not see how a better biography of Cardozo could be written and as far as I know this should be the definitive biography indefinitely. He did not believe the Constitution should necessarily be interpreted as its authors meant it since "they did not see the changes in the relations between states and nation or in the play of social forces that lay hidden in the womb of time. Their beliefs to be significant must be adjusted to the world they knew. It is not in my judgement inconsistent with what they would say today, nor with what they would believe, if they were called upon to interpret 'in the light of our whole experience' the constitution that they framed for the needs of an expanding future." This surely all should admit to be a correct approach to deciding constitutional questions.… (mehr)