An Introduction to the Philosophy of LawPound, Roscoe
Philosophy
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law
Pound, Roscoe
Law -- Philosophy
At the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, a new
way of thinking grew up. Jurists began to think in terms of human
wants or desires rather than of human wills. They began to think that
what they had to do was not simply to equalize or harmonize wills,
but, if not to equalize, at least to harmonize the satisfaction of
wants. They began to weigh or balance and reconcile claims or wants or
desires, as formerly they had balanced or reconciled wills. They began
to think of the end of law not as a maximum of self-assertion, but as
a maximum satisfaction of wants. Hence for a time they thought of the
problem of ethics, of jurisprudence, and of politics as chiefly one of
valuing; as a problem of finding criteria of the relative value of
interests. In jurisprudence and politics they saw that we must add
practical problems of the possibility of making interests effective
through governmental action, judicial or administrative. But the first
question was one of the wants to be recognized--of the interests to be
recognized and secured. Having inventoried the wants or claims or
interests which are asserting and for which legal security is sought,
we were to value them, select those to be recognized, determine the
limits within which they were to be given effect in view of other
recognized interests, and ascertain how far we might give them effect
by law in view of the inherent limitations upon effective legal
action. This mode of thinking may be seen, concealed under different
terminologies, in more than one type of jurist in the last three
decades.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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