Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938)

Not a vivid read, but exactly the type of book one expects from such a distinguished jurist. Thinking we poli-sci students could well become lawyers eventually, this was a first year text, in Calgary in the 1960's. The first edition of this book came out in 1922.

4819. The Nature of the Judicial Process, by Benjamin N, Cardozo. LL.D. (read 20 Apr 2011) This book sets out four lectures which Cardozo gave at Yale in 1921. They are still highly pertinent in today's world. He shows that the Constitution needs to be interpreted for today, not for the 18th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print- 1918, Speech delivered to Columbia University)
Digital. Open ePub. Project Gutenberg; Released August 24, 2008; 33 pages (includes many pages of publication info from the Project Gutenberg.
(Audio: No).
(Feature Film: No).

SUMMARY/EVALUATION:
The book I read about Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. revealed he thought very highly of many people, most of them, authors. This was one of them and his praise was so high that I was curious (and I was familiar with the name as that show more of a law school), so I found this essay through my LAPL subscription to Overdrive.
Although terms take on new meanings as time goes on, so that perhaps even the word, “communism” as he pronounced of it in 1918, did not have entirely the same meaning as it does today, this speech reveals Cardozo to have a politically conservative point of view.
I do enjoy the turns of phrase of speakers and writers from these earlier times.

AUTHOR:
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo. According to Project Gutenberg, “The Altruist in Politics" was delivered by Cardozo as his commencement oration at Columbia College in 1889. It was never copyrighted. Columbia University, which administers Cardozo's literary estate, has explicitly granted permission to Project Gutenberg to publish it.”

GENRE:
Philosophy, Politics

SUBJECTS:
Philosophy, Politics, Communism, Poverty, Wealth.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
"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. The cause of such phenomena is not far to seek. "It used to appear to me," writes Count Tolstoi, in a significant passage, "it used to appear to me that the small number of cultivated, rich and idle men, of whom I was one, composed the whole of humanity, and that the millions and millions of other men who had lived and are still living were not in reality men at all." It is this spirit-the spirit that sees the whole of humanity in the few, and throws into the background the millions and millions of other men-it is this spirit that has aroused the antagonism of reformers, and made the decay of the old forms, the rupture of the old restrictions, the ideal of them and of their followers. When wealth and poverty meet each other face to face, the one the master and the other the dependent, the one exalted and the other debased, it is perhaps hardly matter for surprise that the dependent and debased and powerless faction, in envy of their opponents' supremacy, should demand, not simple reform, but absolute community and equality of wealth. That cry for communism is no new one in the history of mankind. Thousands of years ago it was heard and acted on; and, in the lapse of centuries, its reverberations have but swelled in volume. Again and again, the altruist has arisen in politics, has bidden us share with others the product of our toil, and has proclaimed the communistic dogma as the panacea for our social ills. So today, amid the buried hopes and buried projects of the past, the doctrine of communism still lives in the minds of men. Under stress of misfortune, or in dread of tyranny, it is still preached in modern times as Plato preached it in the world of the Greeks."

RATING:
I give this a 3, as a well-expressed example of his point of view in those times. I like the terminology and structures of language. show less