The Question of Cardozo's Ethnicity
Cardozo was the second Jewish person, after Louis Brandeis, to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Since Cardozo was a member of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community, there has been recent discussion as to whether he should be considered the 'first Hispanic justice,' a notion which is disputed. Cardozo biographer Kaufman, for example, questioned the usage of the term "Hispanic" in the justice's lifetime, stating: "Well, I think he regarded himself as a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula.”
It has also been asserted that Cardozo himself "confessed in 1937 that his family preserved neither the Spanish language nor Iberian cultural traditions". Both the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and the Hispanic National Bar Association consider Sonia Sotomayor to be the first unequivocally Hispanic justice.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin N. Cardozo
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