Edward J. Greenfield, whose flights of rhetoric were a hallmark of the thousands of opinions Justice Greenfield crafted during his three decades on the New York State Supreme Court, died August  26 at his home in Manhattan. He was 98.

Over the years, Justice Greenfield was involved in many notable cases. He presided over the 1975 trial in which three Black Panthers were convicted of murdering two New York City police officers. He ruled that psychiatric patients could not be subjected to drug experiments. He allowed a photographer to continue selling nude photos of the actress Brooke Shields, but scolded her mother for exploiting her.

At the same time, he gained notice for the artistry of his opinions, in which he often luxuriated in the English language, prancing off on whimsical digressions and enlivening the law with colorful asides. Given to musing on the human condition, he was as apt to cite T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain or Shakespeare as he was to cite legal precedent.