Cardozo Book

Andrew L. Kaufman has, after 40 years of work, written what will be the definitive biography of Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Cardozo was one of the premier judges of the first half of this century, serving on the New York Court of Appeals as Chief Judge, the most influential state court in the country, and then on the Supreme Court. On the New York Court of Appeals, Cardozo rewrote tort law with his stamp; his characterizations of negligence, proximate cause, and assumption of the risk still dominate law throughout the land 60 to 80 years after his original decisions. Kaufman recounts all of this, effectively combining legal analysis with biography. Cardozo's father was a judge tarnished with scandal, and it has long been theorized that Cardozo's life was an attempt to retrieve that lost honor. He would, for example, turn down even the simplest gifts that other judges routinely accepted. Kaufman arguably overplays the honor theme when it comes to his legal analysis, most notably in his analysis of Meinhard v. Salmon, in which the judge declared that, in matters of fiduciary obligations, "[a] trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the marketplace." Kaufman, perhaps stretching Cardozo's opinion too far to reach the desired conclusion, views this decision as "a culmination of Cardozo's efforts to implant a sense of honorable conduct into law." The only potential downside to the book, other than the occasional desire to see Kaufman address more frequently the thoughts and analysis of other biographers and commentators on Cardozo's life and work, is that Cardozo's virtue risks becoming the biography's failing: his life was his work. He was celibately monkish in his private life, and other than the politicking behind each of his successive appointments to higher courts, Cardozo's political life was for the most part equally quiet. Fortunately, Cardozo's legal output is so varied and important that the biography's necessary focus on his judicial career is not wasted effort for the author or the reader. --Ted Frank Read More