Benjamin N. Cardozo

In 1981, my ex-wife Bonita and I bought the house at 69-43 Cloverdale Boulevard in Bayside, Queens.  Why there?  Because of the schools in the neighborhood our daughter Rachel (and future son Bret) would be able to attend.

The gem of such schools is Benjamin N. Cardozo High School on 223rd Street, a short distance from our house.  Rachel graduated, class of 1993, and Bret, class of 2003.

So, who was Benjamin N. Cardozo?  A man who rose to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Benjamin N. Cardozo was born in New York City on May 24, 1870 (150 years ago today).  All his grandparents were descendants of the Portuguese Jewish community which had emigrated from Holland to British North America before the Revolutionary War.

Beginning in 1889, Cardozo spent two years at Columbia University's law school, leaving without a degree.  However, in 1891, he passed the New York State bar exam and began practicing law.

In 1913, Cardozo was elected to a fourteen-year term as a judge on the Supreme Court of the State of New York.  In 1917, he was appointed by New York Governor Charles Whitman to the Court of Appeals.  In 1926, Cardozo was elected (as both a Democrat and a Republican) to a fourteen-year term as Chief Judge of the State.  

In 1932, Cardozo was appointed by President Herbert Hoover (and confirmed unanimously by the Senate) to the United States Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

As a tax accountant for thirty years, I was impacted by a US Supreme Court decision, whose opinion was written by Cardozo: Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111 (1933).  He held that Welch's "expenses were too personal, were too bizarre to be ordinary."  Cardozo "did not consider them ordinary and necessary business expenses and therefore not deductible under Section 162 of the Internal Revenue Code."

Benjamin N. Cardozo died on July 9, 1938 at the age of 68.  He was succeeded on the Supreme Court by Felix Frankfurter.  In 1967, a new high school in Bayside, Queens was named in Cardozo's honor.