Jurisprudence Commons^™

Remarks On The Theory Of Appellate Decision And The Rules Or Canons About How Statutes Are To Be Construed, Karl N. Llewellyn

Vanderbilt Law Review

If a statute is to make sense, it must be read in the light of some assumed purpose. A statute merely declaring a rule, with no purpose or objective, is nonsense. If a statute is to be merged into a going system of law, moreover, the court must do the merging, and must in so doing take account of the policy of the statute-or else substitute its own version of such policy. Creative re- shaping of the net result is thus inevitable. But the policy of a statute is of two wholly different kinds-each kind somewhat limited in effect by …

The Interpretation Of Statutes In Modern British Law, W. Friedmann

Vanderbilt Law Review

Mr. Justice Frankfurter recently said that the number of cases coming before the Supreme Court of the United States which were not based on statutes was "reduced almost to zero." This growth of statutory as against pure case law is, of course, not confined to the United States. It inevitably accompanies the social welfare state and the increase in government which every modern industrial society has experienced and which two world wars, with their need for the total mobilization of resources, have further stimulated. Apart from these sociological factors which affect states with the most different legal systems, it is …

Remarks On The Theory Of Appellate Decision And The Rules Or Canons About How Statutes Are To Be Construed, Karl N. Llwellyn

Vanderbilt Law Review

One does not progress far into legal life without learning that there is no single right and accurate way of reading one case, or of reading a bunch of cases. For

(1) Impeccable and correct doctrine makes clear that a case "holds"with authority only so much of what the opinion says as is absolutely necessary to sustain the judgment. Anything else is unnecessary and "distinguishable" and noncontrolling for the future. Indeed, if the judgment rests on two, three or four rulings, any of them can be rightly and righteously knocked out, for the future, as being thus "unnecessary." Moreover, any …

Book Reviews, William N. Ethridge, Jr., M. G. Dakin (Reviewer), A. B. Neil (Reviewer), C. M. Updegraff (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Reviews

The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and Values By C.Herman Pritchett New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948, Pp. 314,$5.00

Lions Under the Throne By Charles P. Curtis, Jr. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1947. Pp. 361. $3.50

The Nine Young Men By Wesley McCune New York: Harper & Bros.,1947. Pp. 293. $3.50

reviewer: William N. Ethridge, Jr.

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A Declaration of Legal Faith By Wiley Rutledge Lawrence, Kansas:University of Kansas Press, 1947. Pp. 82. $2.00

reviewer: M. G. Dakin

The Papers of Walter Clark: 1857-1901, Vol. 1 Edited by Aubrey Lee Brooks and Hugh T. Leffler Chapel …

A Note On Samuel Pufendorf, Anton-Hermann Chroust

Vanderbilt Law Review

The work of Samuel Pufendorf was certainly the outstanding influence on continental legal philosophy during the second half of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. From his work comes the supposedly authoritative notion that scientific natural law and, hence, true legal philosophy as such, began with Hugo Grotius. What he actually meant to say was that Hugo Grotius had secularized the natural law, that is, he had divorced it from moral theology and put it on a non-theological--and, we may surmise--on a non-ethical basis.

Powers Of Chinese Courts, Chao-Lung Yang

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Chinese legal system has recently aroused the interest of not a few Western scholars. But little has been written about the powers of the Chinese courts. It has been said-and it is true-that the Chinese legal system belongs to the Continental type. It will, therefore, be interesting to see in what way it is different from the Anglo-American system. Generally speaking, opinions may differ as to the fundamental features which distinguish the Continental legal system from the Anglo-American. But it may perhaps b e said that such features lie more in the sphere of adjective law and legal technique …

Sociology Of Law--A Student's Concept, Glynn A. Pugh

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Anglo-American lawyer is inclined to restrain his interest to the legal order; he becomes a specialist in the decisions rendered by the courts. The attorney, unfamiliar with present day methodology of the social sciences, is easily bewildered by the writings and judicial decisions of the sociological jurist. Part of this bewilderment may be at once eliminated by distinguishing two concepts of "law." The lawyer may conceive of the law as "that which is backed by the force of politically organized society." An inadequate amount of attention is directed toward the sources of law, its trends and its functions. Sociologists …