Description:

Cardozo Benjamin

3pp ALS on cream stationery inscribed overall and signed by Associate Chief Justice Benjamin Cardozo (1870-1938) as “Benjamin N. Cardozo” in black fountain pen at bottom of second page. In very fine condition, with expected paper folds. A minor paperclip impression found at top of first page. The blank fourth page is a little weathered. Each page measures 5.125” x 6.375”.


Cardozo wrote this delicate refusal on August 12, 1934 from Rye, New York. Harold Roland Shapiro, a New York lawyer, had requested that the acting Supreme Court Associate Justice write him a recommendation to teach administrative law at New York Law School.


Although Cardozo believed that Shapiro was qualified for the position, he wrote: "As for writing to the Dean, I have a fixed rule never to recommend anyone for appointment to a position of any kind unless my opinion has been solicited by the appointing power. You will agree with me, when you reflect about the matter, that this is the only appropriate attitude for a judge to take". Cardozo thus appealed to Shapiro as a fellow lawyer to explain the necessity of impartiality. Cardozo did not flaunt his Supreme Court status; he simply calls himself a "judge".


Benjamin Cardozo was nominated to the Supreme Court by 31st U.S. President and Republican Herbert Hoover in 1932. Cardozo, along with left-leaning justices Harlan Fiske Stone and Louis Brandeis, formed the “Three Musketeers” and voted in favor of many New Deal policies. From 1932 to 1937, they faced off against the “Four Horsemen”, as conservative justices George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, and Pierce Butler were called.


Harold Roland Shapiro (active 1930-1970) was admitted to the New York bar in 1927. Shapiro served for many years as an Assistant District Attorney dealing mainly with criminal cases. He was also the author of several books, like What Every Young Man Should Know About War (1937). This book, published on the eve of World War II, included gruesome accounts of modern warfare; Shapiro had apparently come across disturbing World War I medical reports while researching a law case. Shapiro also published books about labor unions and Abraham Lincoln's biographer Emanuel Hertz.


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