Benjamin Cardozo

“ 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.
Yet it is indeed doubtful whether, in the history of mankind, a doctrine was ever taught more impracticable or more false to the principles it professes than this very doctrine of communism. ”

“ It is the refutation alike of communism and socialism that they thwart the instinct of expansion; that they substitute for individual energy the energy of the government; that they substitute for human personality the blind, mechanical power of the State. The one system, as the other, marks the end of individualism. The one system, as the other, would make each man the image of his neighbor. The one system, as the other, would hold back the progressive, and, by uniformity of reward, gain uniformity of type.
I can look forward to no blissful prospect for a race of men that, under the dominion of the State, at the cost of all freedom of action, at the cost, indeed, of their own true selves, shall enjoy, if one will, a fair abundance of the material blessings of life. ”

“ To the contrary, a court that is left without knowledge of a fact after exploring to the full every channel of information must needs decide against the litigant who counts upon the fact as an essential of his claim. De non apparentibus et de non existentibus eadem est ratio.
We are not persuaded upon this record, supplemented by everything now brought to our attention, that the law of Mexico is other than by the concurrent judgments of the courts below it has been here adjudged to be. That being so, petitioners have not maintained the burden of overcoming the decree. ”

“ To get a living out of the land in one way or another is the thread of common purpose that binds the labor and the leases, and enables us to find in them the tokens of the same vocation. In brief the man is seen to be a farmer by every test of common speech, though his income has been garnered in rents as well as products. ”

“ Petitioners are content thus to limit the inquiry, if we read their argument aright. They insist that the decree which purports to divest them of their title is a nullity even by the law of Mexico and that it is the duty of our courts, if the nullity has been made out, to adjudge ownership accordingly. ”

“ Petitioners concede that the expropriation decree, if lawful and effective under the Constitution and laws of Mexico, must be recognized as lawful and effective under the laws of the United States, the sovereignty of Mexico at the time of that decree being exclusive of any other. ”

“ Price security, we are told, is only a special form of sanitary security; the economic motive is secondary and subordinate; the state intervenes to make its inhabitants healthy, and not to make them rich. On that assumption we are asked to say that intervention will be upheld as a valid exercise by the state of its internal police power, though there is an incidental obstruction to commerce between one state and another. This would be to eat up the rule under the guise of an exception. Economic welfare is always related to health, for there can be no health if men are starving. ”

“ In what has been written, we have assumed in favor of the petitioners, but without intending to decide, that the land law of Mexico in the territory now part of Texas is a proper subject of judicial notice. The assumption helps them nothing. A different case would be here if they were able to refer us to documents or other evidence dehors the present record establishing a different rule from that stated in the findings. In such conditions, the doctrine of judicial notice might be a crutch on which to lean. ”

“ Congress does not play the despot in ordaining that trusts for such uses, if created in the future, shall be treated for the purpose of taxation as if the income of the trust had been retained by the grantor. ”

“ Meeting the objection that the acts of an independent government done in its own territory are not subject to re-examination by the courts of another (Underhill v. Hernandez, supra; Oetjen v. Central Leather Co., supra; Hewitt v. Speyer, supra; Oliver Am. Trading Co. v. Gov't of United States of Mexico, supra) , they say that the land in controversy is now a part of the United States ”

“ I am not unmindful of the argument that the President has the privilege of choice between one standard and another, acting or failing to act according to an estimate of values that is individual and personal. To describe his conduct thus is to ignore the essence of his function. What he does is to inquire into the industrial facts as they exist from time to time. ”

“ It is the method of the great chancellors, who without sacrificing uniformity and certainty, built up the system of equity with constant appeal to the teachings of right reason and conscience. It is the method by which the common law has renewed its life at the hands of its great masters—the method of Mansfield and Marshall and Kent and Holmes. ”

“ It is too late today for the argument to be heard with tolerance that in a crisis so extreme the use of the moneys of the nation to relieve the unemployed and their dependents is a use for any purpose narrower than the promotion of the general welfare. ”

“ Be not blinded by the passions of the moment, but when you prate about your own wrongs and the sufferings of your offspring, take heed lest in the long run you make a worse time of it for your own generation, and leave a bad inheritance for your children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Liability may rest upon the enjoyment by the taxpayer of privileges and benefits so substantial and important as to make it reasonable and just to deal with him as if he were the owner, and to tax him on that basis. ”

“ A suit against a collector who has collected a tax in the fulfillment of a ministerial duty is to-day an anomalous relic of bygone modes of thought. He is not suable as a trespasser, nor is he to pay out of his own purse. He is made a defendant because the statute has said for many years that such a remedy shall exist, though he has been guilty of no wrong, and though another is to pay. ”

“ International law, or the law that governs between states, has at times, like the common law within states, a twilight existence during which it is hardly distinguishable from morality or justice, till at length the imprimatur of a court attests its jural quality. ”

“ Even so, there has emerged out of the flux of an era of transition a working principle of division adapted to the needs of the international community. Through varying modes of speech the law has been groping for a formula that will achieve equality in substance, and not equality in name only. ”

“ Our common law system consists in applying to new combinations of circumstances those rules of law which we derive from legal principles and judicial precedents, and for the sake of attaining uniformity, consistency and certainty, we must apply those rules when they are not plainly unreasonable and inconvenient to all cases which arise ”

“ The builders have appealed to a future that has no warrant in the past; and fixing their gaze upon the distant dreamland, captivated by the vision there beheld, entranced by its ideal effulgence, their eyes were blinded to the real conditions of the human problem they had set before them. ”

“ The most one can say is that a question of federal law is lurking in the background, just as farther in the background there lurks a question of constitutional law, the question of state power in our federal form of government. ”

“ Sometimes the rule of constitution or of statute is clear, and then the difficulties vanish. Even when they are present, they lack at times some of that element of mystery which accompanies creative energy. We reach the land of mystery when constitution and statute are silent, and the judge must look to the common law for the rule that fits the case. ”

“ Every judge consulting his own experience must be conscious of times when a free exercise of will, directed of set purpose to the furtherance of the common good, determined the form and tendency of a rule which at that moment took its origin in one creative act. Savigny's conception of law as something realized without struggle or aim or purpose, a process of silent growth, the fruition in life and manners of a people's history and genius, gives a picture incomplete and partial. It is true if we understand it to mean that the judge in shaping the rules of law must heed the mores of his day. ”

“ The Constitution and statutes and judicial decisions of the commonwealth of Massachusetts are the authentic forms through which the sense of justice of the people of that commonwealth expresses itself in law. We are not to supersede them on the ground that they deny the essentials of a trial because opinions may differ as to their policy or fairness. ”

“ All these embarrassments and obstacles will be removed at a single stoke if the bankruptcy court is free from vexatious interference in its task of supervising and controlling the administration of the assets. ”

“ The Fourteenth Amendment does not assure to a defendant the privilege to be present at such a time. There is nothing he could do if he were there, and almost nothing he could gain. The only shred of advantage would be to make certain that the jury had been brought to the right place and had viewed the right scene. If he felt any doubt about this, he could examine the bailiffs at the trial and learn what they had looked at. The risk that they would lie is no greater than the risk that attaches to testimony about anything. ”

“ There is no question here concerning the Government committing itself through notice sent out by the Secretary of the Treasury expressly or indirectly to a forbidden medium of payment. No question of an anticipatory breach of contract. The Government simply has not in good faith complied with a condition precedent. It has never given notice of purpose to pay the obligation according to its terms. ”

“ The price of error may be so heavy as to erect an unfair barrier against the endeavor of an honest litigant to obtain the judgment of a court. In that event, the Constitution intervenes and keeps the courtroom open. ”

“ There was no conspiracy to impose upon that business a burden of any kind, except to the extent that the enjoyment of a preference might increase the opportunities for profit of the warehouse so preferred. Of any combination more far-reaching, more inclusive in its aims, there is silence in the record after every reasonable inference has been drawn from its pages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The judge who moulds the law by the method of philosophy may be satisfying an intellectual craving for symmetry of form and substance. But he is doing something more. He is keeping the law true in its response to a deep-seated and imperious sentiment. Only experts perhaps may be able to gauge the quality of his work and appraise its significance. But their judgment, the judgment of the lawyer class, will spread to others, and tinge the common consciousness and the common faith. ”

“ We are told that restitution is an equitable doctrine, and that as the court, upon consideration of all the facts, should hold there was no inequity in the carrier's retaining what it had collected, refusal of a decree is merely to withhold action, as a court of equity is always free to do in such circumstances. ”

“ This is true, for illustration, of freedom of thought and speech. Of that freedom one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. ”

“ Enough for present purposes that the disability has its roots in a principle more nearly ultimate than either waiver or estoppel, the principle that no one shall be permitted to found any claim upon his own inequity or take advantage of his own wrong. ”

“ Indeed, a fortnight later, she said to one of her physicians, though her condition was then grave, 'You will get me well, won't you?' Fear or even belief that illness will end in death will not avail of itself to make a dying declaration. ”

“ To hold that a lien has progressed to such a point as to be a warning to mortgagees and purchasers of a contingent liability, like a notice of lis pendens, is far from holding that, while the liability is unliquidated and unknown, the lien thus created is perfect and specific. ”

“ Accepting them, as we do, we accept also the conclusion to which they point with inescapable directness. To restrain the diversion at the bridge would bring distress and even ruin to a long-established settlement of tillers of the soil for no other or better purpose than to vindicate a barren right. ”