Quote #193,010
"The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypothes..." — Benjamin N. Cardozo
The rules and principles of case law have never been treated as final truths but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice. Every new case is an experiment, and if the accepted rule which seems applicable yields a result which is felt to be unjust, the rule is reconsidered.
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View AllHistory or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.— Benjamin N. Cardozo
The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.— Benjamin N. Cardozo
In law, as in every other branch of knowledge, the truths given by induction tend to form the premises for new deductions. The lawyers and the judges of successive generations do not repeat for themselves the process of verification any more than most of us repeat the demonstrations of the truths of astronomy or physics.— Benjamin N. Cardozo