How are reputations forged? Why do some reputations endure, while others crumble? And how can we know whether a reputation is fairly deserved? In this ambitious book, Richard Posner confronts these questions in the case of Benjamin Cardozo.

Thus, he did not modernize law at every opportunity. In this book, Kaufman interweaves the personal and professional lives of this remarkable man to yield a multidimensional whole.

"A fascinating study of the language of the law. . . . This book is to be highly recommended: certainly, for those who find the time to read it, it will broaden the mind, and give lawyers a new insight into their role."—New Law Journal

Law punishes violence, yet law depends on violence. In this book, a group of leading interdisciplinary legal scholars seeks to map the inexorable but unstable relationship of law to violence.

How he arrived at his rulings, with their far-reaching consequences, becomes clear in this book, the first to explore the connections between Cardozo's life and his jurisprudence.