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Imagining Judges That Apply Law: How They Might Do It, James Maxeiner
Imagining Judges That Apply Law: How They Might Do It, James Maxeiner
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"Judges should apply the law, not make it." That plea appears perennially in American politics. American legal scholars belittle it as a simple-minded demand that is silly and misleading. A glance beyond our shores dispels the notion that the American public is naive to expect judges to apply rather than to make law.
American obsession with judicial lawmaking has its price: indifference to judicial law applying. If truth be told, practically we have no method for judges, as a matter of routine, to apply law to facts. Our failure leads American legal scholars to question whether applying law to facts …
Guiding Litigation: Applying Law To Facts In Germany, James Maxeiner
Guiding Litigation: Applying Law To Facts In Germany, James Maxeiner
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"Judges should apply the law, not make it." That plea appears perennially in American politics. American legal scholars belittle it as a "simple-minded demand" that is "silly and misleading. It is not; it is what the public rightly expects from law. H.L.A. Hart, reminded U.S. jurists that "conventional legal thought in all countries conceives as the standard judicial function: the impartial application of determinant existing rules in the settlement of disputes."
This essay discusses the German method of judicial applying of law to facts. called, in German, the "Relationstechnik," that is, in English, literally "relationship technique." This essay shows how …