Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (May 24, 1870 – July 9, 1938) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals from 1914 to 1932 and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1932 until his death in 1938. Cardozo is remembered for his significant influence on the development of American common law in the 20th century, as well as for his philosophy and vivid prose style.
Born in New York City, Cardozo passed the bar in 1891 after attending Columbia Law School. He won an election to the New York Supreme Court in 1913 but was appointed to the New York Court of Appeals the following year. He won election as chief judge of that court in 1926. As chief judge, he wrote majority opinions in cases such as Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co.
In 1932, President Herbert Hoover appointed Cardozo to the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Cardozo served on the Court until his death in 1938 and formed part of the liberal bloc of justices known as the Three Musketeers. He wrote the Court's majority opinion in notable cases such as Nixon v. Condon (1932) and Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (1937).
Cardozo, the son of Rebecca Washington (née Nathan) and Albert Jacob Cardozo, was born in 1870 in New York City. Both Cardozo's maternal grandparents, Sara Seixas and Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan, and his paternal grandparents, Ellen Hart and Michael H. Cardozo, were Western Sephardim of the Portuguese-Jewish community, and affiliated with Manhattan's Congregation Shearith Israel. Cardozo had his bar mitzvah at Shearith Israel in June of 1883. Their ancestors had immigrated to the British colonies from London, England, before the American Revolution.
The family were descended from Jewish-origin New Christian conversos. They left the Iberian Peninsula for Holland during the Inquisition. There they returned to the practice of Judaism. Cardozo family tradition held that their marrano (New Christians who maintained crypto-Jewish practices in secrecy) ancestors were from Portugal, although Cardozo's ancestry has not been firmly traced to that country. But "Cardozo" (archaic spelling of Cardoso), "Seixas", and "Mendes" are the Portuguese, rather than Castilian, spelling of those common Iberian surnames.
Benjamin Cardozo had a fraternal twin, his sister Emily. They had four other siblings, including an older sister Nell and older brother.
Benjamin was named for his uncle, Benjamin Nathan, a vice president of the New York Stock Exchange, who was murdered in 1870. The case was never solved. Among their many cousins, given their deep history in the US, was the poet Emma Lazarus. Other earlier relations include Francis Lewis Cardozo (1836–1903), Thomas Cardozo, and Henry Cardozo, free men of color of Charleston, South Carolina. Francis became a Presbyterian minister in New Haven, Connecticut, after education in Scotland, and was elected Secretary of State of South Carolina during the Reconstruction era. Later he worked as an educator in Washington, D.C., under a Republican administration.
Albert Cardozo, Benjamin Cardozo's father, was a judge on the Supreme Court of New York (the state's general trial court) until 1868. He was implicated in a judicial corruption scandal sparked by the Erie Railway takeover wars and was forced to resign. The scandal also led to the creation of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. After leaving the court, the senior Cardozo practiced law for nearly two decades more until his death in 1885.
When Benjamin and Emily were young, their mother Rebecca died. The twins were raised during much of their childhood largely by their sister Nell, who was 11 years older. Benjamin remained devoted to her throughout his life.
One of Benjamin's tutors was Horatio Alger. When the Cardozos engaged Alger in 1883 to tutor Benjamin and his older sister Elizabeth, they were unaware that Alger had a history of likely molesting teen boys during his time as a minister in Brewster, Massachusetts, from 1864 to 1866. There is no evidence that Alger continued committing these crimes after the ones he was alleged of during his ministry, from which he was expelled in 1866 following an inquiry in which he failed to deny the boys' description of events. In reviewing Cardozo's life, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye stated Alger provided Cardozo with a superb education, and a love of poetry.
At age 15, Cardozo entered Columbia University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, earning his BA in 1889 and his MA in 1890. He was admitted to Columbia Law School in 1889. Cardozo wanted to enter a profession that could enable him to support himself and his siblings, but he also hoped to restore the family name, which had been sullied by his father's actions as a judge. Cardozo left law school after two years without a law degree, as only two years of law school was required to sit for the bar during this era in New York.
Cardozo passed the bar examination in 1891 and began practicing appellate law alongside his older brother. Benjamin Cardozo practiced law in New York City until year-end 1913 with Simpson, Warren and Cardozo.
Interested in advancement and restoring the family name, Cardozo ran for a judgeship on the New York Supreme Court. In November 1913, Cardozo was elected by a large margin to a 14-year term on that court and took office on January 1, 1914.
In February 1914, Cardozo was designated to the New York Court of Appeals under the Amendment of 1899. He was reportedly the first Jewish person to serve on the Court of Appeals.
In January 1917, he was appointed by the governor to a regular seat on the Court of Appeals to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Samuel Seabury. In November 1917, he was elected on the Democratic and Republican tickets to a 14-year term on the Court of Appeals.
In 1926, he was elected, on both tickets again, to a 14-year term as Chief Judge. He took office on January 1, 1927, and resigned on March 7, 1932 to accept his appointment to the United States Supreme Court.
His tenure was marked by a number of original rulings, in tort and contract law in particular. This is partly due to timing; rapid industrialization was forcing courts to look anew at old common law components to adapt to new settings.
In 1921, Cardozo gave the Storrs Lectures at Yale University, which were later published as The Nature of the Judicial Process, a book that remains valuable to judges today. Shortly thereafter, Cardozo became a member of the group that founded the American Law Institute, which crafted a Restatement of the Law of Torts, Contracts, and a host of other private law subjects. He wrote three other books that also became standards in the legal world.