Law, Literature and Cardozo's Judicial Poetics

Authors

Richard H. Weisberg, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of LawFollow

Abstract

The following article suggests a new perspective on Benjamin N. Cardozo's judicial theory. The introductory pages offer a comparison of Cardozo to a strikingly similar figure from the literary world, Flaubert, and in that light emphasize his awareness and acceptance of the place of culture and intuition in the judicial enterprise. Part I perceives Cardozo's imprecisely named "Method of Sociology" as pointing, in effect, to a "Method of Culture." This section also elaborates on the intuitive element of his judicial "poetics," not as a method in itself, but as the disciplined subjectivity which leads judges to use his four methods (logic, history, custom, sociology) as they do.

Part II (A) then expands, systematically, on the "Method of Culture" by identifying the poetic skills which inform that method: style and rhetoric, hermeneutics, value awareness and imagination. The essay concludes in Part II (B) with selected arguments and opinions by Cardozo exemplifying the four poetic skills within the "Method of Culture."

Keywords

Biography, Judges

Recommended Citation

Richard H. Weisberg, Law, Literature and Cardozo's Judicial Poetics, 1 Cardozo L. Rev. 283 (1979).
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol1/iss1/16