Andrew Kaufman has written an engrossing account of the life of Benjamin Cardozo, a judicial hero of the first third of the century. This book should prove especially useful for first-year law students, who read many of Cardozo's most important decisions in their contracts and torts classes. But even non-lawyers with an interest in the legal system will find it highly readable and informative.

Professor Kaufman presents his subject, first, as a man, establishing the personal background that shaped Cardozo's work as a judge. Kaufman then offers an insightful examination of the judicial work of Judge and Justice Cardozo, analyzing the development and maturation of Cardozo's thinking regarding the many legal principles which have become mainstays of American jurisprudence. The biography is well suited to lawyer and non-lawyer, and provides an extraordinary social history of the shaping of the American common law that governs our lives and liability today. This biography is a must-read primer for all soon-to-be law students, who will find in it an invaluable guide to the principles they are preparing to study. Professor Kaufman's honest analysis of the talents and faults of his subject is much to be commended.

This is a book for laypeople and lawyers, rare in judicial biography. It is written in a clear and lucid prose, eschewing much of the current academic jargon. The author's years of work include many interviews with people now dead (and thus unavailable!), providing invaluable insights and perspectives into Cardozo's life and judicial influence. This work will be interesting to social historians, as well, for its treatment of the Nathan and Cardozo families' experiences in an evolving America.

Judge Posner examines the reasons for Cardozo's reputation and, more important, analyzes the rhetorical methods the judge used in creating some of the most renowned and cited decisions in American law. How and why he crafted the statement of the facts a certain way for one decision, a different way for another; how Cardozo used a lawyer's persuasive skills in reaching results he believed were warranted. Posner also examines the inconsistencies in Cardozo's thinking and opinion-writing. The book presents a portrait of a brilliant, prudent jurist and illuminates his professional shortcomings as well. May have little appeal for the non-lawyer, but for anyone interested in legal writing, the judicial process, and opinion-making, this is a terrific book.

This may be the classic book by Posner. Shorter than most his books--and less encyclopaedic--but also less maiandering. Cardozo: A Study in Reputation stays on track, while revealing a complex sensibility of jurisprudence by Posner and an astounding intuition by Cardozo. In this book we see two great legal minds at work: Cardozo's providing the interpretations that further social welfare and Posner's explaining why these interpretations are so desirable.

I 'd rate this book the one MUST READ book if you are thinking about law school. This is what law school is about: Struggling with how to promote social welfare by interpretation and rulemaking.

Judge Posner builds and presents a strong case in defense of Justice Cardozo's reputation as a leading American jurist. Apparently, sometime during the 1950s a revisionary movement emerged in American legal thought that eventually injured Benjamin N. Cardozo. His Hemmingwayesque opinions were criticized as pedestrian, and the logic behind his reasoning was attacked as paternalistic. Judge Posner's thesis (a top-notch dissertation) deflects the subjective defamation and focuses upon objective standards of judicial measurement. Employing the resources of an electronic legal database, he proves that the Cardozo opinions, particularly those written as a judge in NY's Ct. of Appeals, have been consistently cited with regularity. This original test demonstrates that Cardozo's influence on the common law is unrivaled by any jurist other than O W Holmes.

Attempting to create a new genre of social science, Judge Posner smoothly integrates the drives that formed Cardozo as a man with the strictures of the law that define a judge. Analysis of the opinions, along with the briefs of the arguments, show that he was a good judge because he was able to reach correct results even when the specific facts of cases seemed to predict a legal anamoly. That quality produced case law that remains hard to reconcile, and the result has been attacks on the decisions as inconsistent. Judge Posner recognizes those weaknesses, but rather than contorting his logic in reconciling them explains that a man's reputation is typically based on either his high points or his low ones. In Cardozo's case, his death after only six years on the US Supreme Court limited the high points to controversial cases, such as MacPherson and Hynes. Judge Posner speculates that had Cardozo, like Holmes, had a full career as a Supreme Court justice the subjective standard for measurement of his reputation would have shifted away from the decisions as a state judge.

Although those state court opinions continue to dominate Torts textbooks, Cardozo's critics have injured his reputation by suggesting that he was merely a flamboyant local judge. Judge Posner shows that their slurs have not reached the ears of leading jurists. However, the ordinary person is apt to adopt those reputationary revisions without actually reading Cardozo's opinions and relating them to the specific cases and the development of American common law. Thus, Judge Posner creates a bridge, somewhat like Justice Cardozo, between arcane legal studies and the conduct of the people that law governs.