Courts and Legislation1

Roscoe Pound

American Political Science Review, 1913, vol. 7, issue 3, 361-383

Abstract: Let me begin with a quotation:“[There] is no doubt but that our law and the order thereof is over-confuse[d]. It is infinite and without order or end. There is no stable ground therein nor sure stay; but every one that can color reason maketh a stop to the best law that is before time devised. The subtlety of one serjeant shall [make] inert and destroy all the judgments of many wise men before time received. There is no stable ground in our common law to lean unto. The judgments of years be infinite and full of much controversy. .... The judges are not bound to follow them as a rule, but after their own liberty they have authority to judge, according as they are instructed by the serjeants, and as the circumstance of the case doth them move. And this maketh judgments and processes of our law to be without end and infinite; this causeth suits to be long in decision. Therefore, to remedy this matter groundly, it were necessary in our law to use the same remedy that Justinian did in the law of the Romans, to bring this infinite process to certain ends, to cut away these long laws, and by the wisdom of some politic and wise men institute a few and better laws and ordinances.”

Date: 1913
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