Cardozo\u27s Allegheny College Opinion: A Case Study in Law as an Art

This Article consists of two related pieces. One piece considers interpretations of Cardozo\u27s opinion in Allegheny College v. National Chautauqua County Bank. Cardozo commonly is placed among the greatest American judges, but his analysis in Allegheny College is regularly criticized as contrived and artificial. This Article attempts to resuscitate the reputation of his analysis by placing the case in its historical and doctrinal context. The other piece continues the elaboration of a framework introduced in a previous article for thinking about law as a discipline. Central to this framework is a particular conception of the western intellectual tradition in terms of disciplines. The notion is that a discipline is at once a science, an art, and a technology. How are these seemingly disparate pieces related in this case study? On the one hand, the disciplinary framework provides a general scheme for examining Cardozo\u27s opinion. On the other, the analysis of Cardozo\u27s opinion presented here is used to explore the concept of law as an art. The rest of the Introduction expands the sketch presented thus far