![\"Roscoe-pound-annual-dinner-1940\"](\"http:\/\/fiduciarydutiesblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Roscoe-pound-annual-dinner-1940.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHere is Pound in full power, writing in 1923:<\/p>\n
\u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0On 19th Century law in America<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe truth that more and more since the sixteenth century and universally in the nineteenth century the end of law was conceived in terns of the maximum of individual self-assertion.\u00a0 This end was to be attained through a politico-legal ordering of society in which coercive social control was reduced to its lowest terms.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Aka, \u201cfrontier justice.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSelf assertion is one of the fundamental instincts or, if you will, one of the fundamental desires of men \u2026 The conception of law as a necessary evil, the doctrine that each rule of law must be justified by showing that it promotes a maximum of individual self-assertion, the doctrine of a minimum of law, restricted to what is demonstrably necessary to the realization of freedom as an idea, are protests against which \u2026 eighteenth-century thinking had seemed to lead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Law and Society<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot develop the utmost that is in human powers in a mad scramble in which values are lost by friction and waste.\u00a0 We must have a certain ordering of human activities that puts limits to human action, that assigns each to do things in order to protect existing values and to further the creation of new ones.\u00a0 How far this ordering shall go must depend on the civilization of the time and place, on the values to be conserved and the means at hand to create new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0What is Law?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere is no universal body of legal institutions and legal rules for all civilizations.\u00a0 Instead there is a universal idea, namely, human civilization.\u00a0 \u2018Different in its details,\u2019 [Kohler] says, law \u2018is alike in the fundamental quest, that is, the furthering of civilization through a forcible ordering of things \u2026 a relation which takes on a different content with the infinite variety in the conditions of human cultivation\u2019\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cBut law is not only a means toward civilization, it is a product of civilization.\u00a0 We must look at it, therefore, in three ways: as to the past as a product of civilization, as to the present as a means of maintaining civilization, as to the future as a means of furthering civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Rural America<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn rural, pioneer, agricultural America of the forepart of the last century, there was no occasion to limit the contracts a labourer could make as to taking his pay in goods.\u00a0 To have done so would have been arbitrary.<\/p>\n \u201cIn urban, industrial America of the twentieth century, on the other hand, a regime of abstract freedom of contract between employer and employee often led to a destruction of values.\u00a0 It led to sacrifice of the social interest in the human life of the individual worker.\u00a0 Hence it was not unreasonable to put limits upon what employer and employee might contract.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0How Society Maintains Order<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere must be some system that does this.\u00a0 It may be done by political or politico military machinery, as in the extreme case of Sparta; by tradition and stratified society resting on authority, as in the Middle Ages; by free competition, as we sought to do in the nineteenth century, or by an economic regime, as today.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn any event it is the place of the law to uphold that system so that civilization may he maintained\u00a0 \u2026 A change of attitude in legal thinking throughout the world, which marks twentieth century jurisprudence, rests on recognition of the social interest in the individual life as something broader and more inclusive than individual self-assertion.\u201d<\/p>\n Roscoe Pound, Interpretations of Legal History<\/strong> (Macmillan Company 1923)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Roscoe Pound, dean of Harvard Law School, was an influential legal scholar with a large body of writings.\u00a0 Some say he later contradicted himself; perhaps, but his earlier writings offer deep insight into the American legal system. (Pound was born in 1870, and was raised in Nebraska.\u00a0 His chief academic training was as a botanist, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fresnolawyerblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}