Judge Made Law

Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo was a quintessential judicial activist, basing his jurisprudential philosophy on sociology, rather than statute law or legal precedent. From that jurisprudence came the social disintegration of American society in the late 20th century.

In 1932 President Herbert Hoover nominated Benjamin Cardozo to succeed the retiring Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Judge Cardozo was an appropriate choice.

Both he and Justice Holmes, along with Justice Louis Brandeis, were advocates of the new jurisprudential theory that, whenever possible, legal cases should be decided on the basis of what the social-justice principles of socialism envisioned as the appropriate outcome. What the law or legal precedent directed was less important than using the judicial power to reshape society. This necessarily implied antagonism towards both Judeo-Christian principles and English constitutiona