Legal Commentary

All the recent talk about whether Justice Cardozo was in fact the first Hispanic justice gives me a chance to share what I consider one of the great lines in the U.S. Reports.  In 1936 the Court decided two companion cases dealing with equal protection challenges to a New York milk marketing law.  In one of the cases, Borden's Farm Products v. Ten Eyck, 297 U.S. 251 (1936), the Court upheld part of the law, on a 5-4 vote with the Four Horsemen dissenting.  In the next case, Mayflower Farms v. Ten Eyck, 297 U.S. 266 (1936), Justice Roberts switched sides and the Court struck down the other provision, with Cardozo writing the dissent.  Cardozo's dissent begins with this beautifully understated zinger:

"The judgment just announced is irreconcilable in principle with the judgment in Borden's Case, 297 U.S. 251, 56 S.Ct. 453, 80 L.Ed. 669, announced a minute or so earlier."

Whatever label we give to his ethnicity, the man could write a good line.