Law Commons^™

Taking Another Ride On Flopper: Benjamin Cardozo, Safe Space, And The Cultural Significance Of Coney Island, Robert N. Strassfeld

Faculty Publications

This article examines the history and cultural meaning of Coney Island and its amusement parks, as well as Cardozo's 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's 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's assumption of risk analysis. It …