FOREWORD TO THE NATURE OF THE JUDICIAL PROCESS Andrew

hy a new edition of The Nature of the Judicial Process? Presumably because in the world of law, Benjamin Cardozo still rocks, and his opinions and writings still send worthwhile messages as we near the 100th anniversary of his election to the bench. All law students and many academics continue to wrestle with a number of his common law opinions. Just this year Professor Lawrence Cunningham devoted many pages to comparing Cardozo’s method of approach to decision-making to the more modern, economic-oriented approach of Judge Richard Posner and found Cardozo’s method more helpful. Cardozo’s approach to constitutional law also continues to have many adherents on the bench and off; and, in a legal world filled with both stronglyheld doubts and certainties, his nuanced, and I might say, ambiguous approach to the art of judging continues to beguile. The Nature of the Judicial Process was his major effort to address the subject of judicial decision-making out of the confines and constraints of a judicial opinion. A new edition of The Nature of Judicial Process invites a new generation of readers to become familiar with a man who became one of the giants of twentieth century lawmaking by political accident after a most unpromising start. Benjamin Cardozo was born in 1870 into a political family. His father was a judge of the New York Supreme Court, New York’s major trial court. His ancestors, the Cardozos