Natural Law Commons^™

Nietzsche, Thomas A. Cowan

Vanderbilt Law Review

I find that the attempt to assess Nietzsche's value to contemporary jurisprudence is fraught with extreme difficulty. Not only was Nietzsche perhaps the most controversial figure in the history of ideas:' this might have happened to one whose message was simple.But in Nietzsche's case the ideas themselves are highly controversial, paradoxical and even "immoral." Like every great thinker Nietzsche was more provocative to his enemies than to his friends. His enemies took their revenge by burying him under a deluge of refutation and abuse. Apparently Nietzsche was guilty of what might be called the crime of "universal treason." He gave …

The Function Of Legal Philosophy, Roscoe Pound

Vanderbilt Law Review

For twenty-four hundred years--from the Greek thinkers of the fifth century B.C. who asked whether right was right by nature or only by enactment and convention, to the social philosophers of today, who seek the ends, the ethical basis and the enduring principles of social control--the philosophy of law has taken a leading role in all study of human institutions. The perennial struggle of American administrative law with nineteenth-century constitutional formulations of Aristotle's threefold classification of governmental power, the stone wall of natural rights against which attempts to put an end to private war in industrial disputes for a long …

Plato And The Doctrine Of Natural Law, Hans Kelsen

Vanderbilt Law Review

As a result of the shocks which the existing social orders have experienced through two World Wars and the Russian Revolution, an intellectual movement is becoming increasingly evident in the Western World--one which, in sharp reaction to a scientific-positivistic and relativistic philosophy, aims at a return to metaphysics and theology, and--closely connected with this--to a renewal of the doctrine of natural law. The proponents of this trend believe they find valuable support in the philosophy of Plato, whose authority until recently was virtually uncontested--and in this they are justified. Plato's doctrine of Ideas is the boldest of metaphysical speculations, for …

Austin's Theory Of The Separation Of Law And Morals, Samuel E. Stumpf

Vanderbilt Law Review

The lingering influence of the natural law theory in England brought forth a powerful new philosophy of law. The chief features of this new theory were developed by Hobbes and Bentham and found their most compelling formulation in the works of the "analytical"jurist, John Austin. What concerned these men most was how to deal with the existence of morally bad laws. Sir William Blackstone had said in his Commentaries that the laws of God are superior in obligation to all other laws; that no human laws should be allowed to contradict them; that human laws are of no validity if …

The Legal Philosophy Of Morris R. Cohen, Huntington Cairns

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cohen died in 1947 with five of the numerous books he had planned published. Since that time others have appeared. If he did not live to finish his life's work, he accomplished more than is given to most scholars who teach and participate in the numerous public activities that marked his career. Cohen was not a hopeful man and he would not be attracted by the thought, he once said in conversation, of living life over again--particularly, he added after a pause, if he had to teach mathematics to college students. He was disturbed above everything else by the decline …

Book Reviews, Edgar Bodenheimer, Robert S. Lancaster, Stanley D. Rose, Lloyd B. Urdahl

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Great Legal Philosophers: Selected Readings in Jurisprudence Edited by Clarence Morris. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1959. Pp. 571. $10.00.

reviewer: Edgar Bodenheimer

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Law as Large as Life: A Natural Law for Today and the Supreme Court as its Prophet By Charles P. Curtis. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1959. $3.50.

reviewer: Robert S. Lancaster

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Cases and Materials on Juriprudence By John C. H. Wu. St.Paul: West Publishing Co. 1960. Pp. xliii, 719. $12.00.

reviewer: Stanley D. Rose

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The Law and Legal Theory of the Greeks: An Introduction By J.Walter Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, …