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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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University of Michigan Law School

Journal

Principles and rules of law

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

What Is The Law? Ii, Joseph W. Bingham Dec 1912

What Is The Law? Ii, Joseph W. Bingham

Michigan Law Review

I shall now discuss briefly the nature of the causal effects of precedents upon judicial decisions and the justifications for those effects. One frequently hears laymen scoffing at the respect which courts pay to precedents and sometimes displaying a lamentable ignorance both of the nature of the influence which precedents have on the law and of the reasons for the existence of that influence. The influence of past example on human action pervades all human conduct and endeavor at all times. That influence is fundamental. It occurs through instinctive as well as intelligent processes and sometimes runs to unreasonable extents. …


What Is The Law?, Joseph W. Bingham Nov 1912

What Is The Law?, Joseph W. Bingham

Michigan Law Review

It is intended that this title shall demand an analysis of the field of study in which the lawyer or jurist works and a determination of its essential and contributing elements. The purpose of the article is to sketch briefly a partial answer which will be instructive and helpful to the student who faces the problem as I faced it some ten years ago. I do not expect that anything new will be found in these ideas. I imagine that all of them must have been expressed many times before. Some of them are common­place. None is esoteric. Probably the …