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Courts and Legislation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Roscoe Pound
Roscoe Pound
Affiliation:
Harvard University Law School
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Extract

Let me begin with a quotation:

“[There] is no doubt but that our law and the order thereof is over-confuse[d]. It is infinite and without order or end. There is no stable ground therein nor sure stay; but every one that can color reason maketh a stop to the best law that is before time devised. The subtlety of one serjeant shall [make] inert and destroy all the judgments of many wise men before time received. There is no stable ground in our common law to lean unto. The judgments of years be infinite and full of much controversy. .... The judges are not bound to follow them as a rule, but after their own liberty they have authority to judge, according as they are instructed by the serjeants, and as the circumstance of the case doth them move. And this maketh judgments and processes of our law to be without end and infinite; this causeth suits to be long in decision. Therefore, to remedy this matter groundly, it were necessary in our law to use the same remedy that Justinian did in the law of the Romans, to bring this infinite process to certain ends, to cut away these long laws, and by the wisdom of some politic and wise men institute a few and better laws and ordinances.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , August 1913 , pp. 361 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1913

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References

2 Maitland, , English Law and the Renaissance, 42.Google Scholar

3 Works (Bowring edition) v, 369.

4 Brown, vs. Leyds, , 14 Cape Law Journal, 94.Google Scholar

5 Rex vs. Barger, 6 Com. L. R. 41, 63, 81. See Webb vs. Outrim [1907] A. C. 81.

6 Jurisprudence (4 ed.), 655.

7 Institutionen des deutschen Privatrechts, §1.

8 Kantorowicz, , Rechtswissenschaft und Soziologie, 5.Google Scholar

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10 Laurent, , Droit civil Français, i, §§250–262.Google Scholar

11 Baudry-Lacantinerie, Précis de droit civil (8 ed.) preface; Capitant, , Introduction à l'Étude du droit civil (3 ed.) 30 ff.Google Scholar See also Demogue, , Notions fondamentales du droit privé, 216 ff.Google Scholar; Esmein, La jurisprudence et la doctrine, Revue trimestrielle de droit civil, i, 1; Saleilles, Le code civil et la méthode historique, Livre du centennaire du code civil, i, 97; Gény, , Méthode d'interprétation, §§39–59.Google Scholar

12 Jurisprudence (4 ed.) 1026–1036. See my paper, “Spurious Interpretation,” 7 Columbia Law Rev. 379.

13 “These decisions leave the legitimate business of the country in condition of uncertainty. ‥‥ This condition I have met by a bill which I have introduced in the Senate. It enumerates in plain English every known practice and expedient through which combinations have stifled competition, and prohibits anyone from engaging in them.” Follette, Senator La in American Magazine, July, 1912.Google Scholar

14 Schuster, , The German Civil Code, 12 Law Quarterly Rev. 17, 22.Google Scholar As to this notion of authentic interpretation, the maxim eius est interpretari legem cuius est condere and the break down of non-judicial interpretation by legislative bodies and royal commissions, see Gény, , Méthode d'interprétation, §§40–45.Google Scholar

15 Jurisprudence (4 ed.), 695.

16 Endemann, , Lehrbuch des bürgerlichen Rechts, i, §5.Google Scholar See Crome, , System des deutschen bürgerlichen Rechts, i, §§9, 11Google Scholar; Kohler, , Lehrbuch des bürgerlichen Rechts, i, §1.Google Scholar

17 Geleitwort, to Rogge, , Methodologische Vorstudien zu einer Kritik des Rechts, iii.Google Scholar

18 Prohibitions del Roy, 12 Rep. 63.

19 Fragment on Government, xvii.

20 L'Interprétation juridique, §§236 ff.

21 Lehrbuch des bürgerlichen Rechts, i, §38.

22 Kantorowicz, , Rechtswissenschaft und Soziologie, 9Google Scholar; Ehrlich, , Die Erforschung des lebenden Rechts, Schmoller's Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Gewallung und Volkswirthschaft, xxxv, 129.Google Scholar

23 Nature and Sources of Law, §370.

24 Langbridge's case, Y.B. 19 Ed. III, 375.

25 Prohibitions del Roy, 12 Rep. 63.

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