punctilio

Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo once described the standard of a fiduciary’s conduct to be “something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive.”

They combined, then as now, a wild bureaucratic adherence to punctilio and procedure with entanglements of cohort and clan that could shortcut the procedure in a moment.

There lingers, even in our mercantile age, an admiration for the aristocratic ethos, the punctilio, of the duel.

Contestants smiled and struggled as they spelled words like “philhellenism” and “punctilio” to move on to the next round.

Disobedience was heresy, and Rome, for a century, endeavored to convulse Europe on this simple punctilio.