Raised in a New York Sephardi milieu, Benjamin Cardozo was, together with his twin Emily, the youngest of seven children born to Rebecca Washington Nathan and Albert Jacob Cardozo. His father was a lawyer and served on the Supreme Court of New York. Benjamin would follow in his father’s footsteps, though climbed to greater judicial heights, while avoiding the pitfalls of scandal that dogged his father’s time on the bench.

He served on the New York Court of Appeals from 1914 until 1932, when Herbert Hoover appointed him to fill the seat vacated by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He had a huge impact on the development of American common law in the twentieth century.