Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons
Abstract
This article examines the history and cultural meaning of Coney Island and its amusement parks, as well as Cardozo\u27s biography, in an effort to discover the basis for that feeling of contempt. It shows that a variety of attributes of Coney Island, most notably its embrace of what was, for its day, a robust and open sexuality and carnival spirit, were alien and threatening to Cardozo\u27s Victorian values. It also shows how this clash of values would have naturally inclined Cardozo to think of Coney Island as a dangerous place and led him to Murphy\u27s assumption of risk analysis. It further shows, however, that Steeplechase might have been thought of in a very different way, as a safe space in which park goers were invited to let down their guard and take apparent risks in a safe setting. In so doing, the article explores both the hidden history of the Murphy case and the suppressed alternative reading of law and facts that is similarly hidden by Cardozo\u27s opinion
