The Nature of the Judicial Process

Judges don't just discover the law, they create it. A renowned and much-used analysis of the process of judicial decision-making, now in a library-quality cloth edition with modern formatting and presentation. Includes embedded page numbers from the original 1921 edition for continuity of citations and syllabi. Features a new, explanatory Foreword by Justice Cardozo's premier biographer, Andrew L. Kaufman, senior professor at Harvard Law School and author of "Cardozo" (Harvard Univ. Press, 1998). Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870-1938) offered the world a candid and self-conscious study of how judges decide cases and the law - they are lawmakers and not just law-appliers, he knew - all drawn from his insights and experience on the bench in a way that no judge had done before. Asked the basic questions, "What is it that I do when I decide a case? To what sources of information do I appeal for guidance?," Cardozo answered them in his methodical, rich, and timeless prose, explaining the proper use of such decisional tools as logic and analogy to precedent; analysis of history and tradition; application of public policy, community mores, and sociology; and even the subconscious forces that drive judges' decisions. This book has impacted the introspective examination of the lawmaking process of the courts in a way no other book has had. It continues to be read today by lawyers and judges, law students and scholars, historians and political scientists, and philosophers - among others interested in how judges really think and the tools they employ. Judges are people, and lawmakers, too. "The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men, do not turn aside in their course, and pass the judges by. We like to figure to ourselves the processes of justice as coldly objective and impersonal. The law, conceived of as a real existence, dwelling apart and alone, speaks, through the voices of priests and ministers, the words which they have no choice except to utter. ...It has a lofty sound; it is well and finely said; but it can never be more than partly true." Beyond precedential cases and tradition, judges make choices, using methods of analysis and biases that ought to be examined. Famous at the time for his trenchant and fluid opinions as a Justice on New York's highest court - he is still studied on questions of torts, contracts, and business law - and later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Cardozo filled the lecture hall at Yale when he finally answered the frank query into what judges do and how do they do it. The lectures became a landmark book and a source for all other studies of the ways of a judge. Brought to a new generation by Professor Kaufman, and presented as part of the properly formatted Legal Legends Series of Quid Pro Books, this edition is the understandable and usable rendition of a classic work of law and politics.