"The Path of the Law" after one hundred years
Article Abstract:
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s speech "The Path of the Law," originally presented in 1897, foreshadowed many developments in legal scholarship and called for a more modern approach to the law. Holmes called for the removal of the mystical and moral terms that had cloaked the law. Lawyers should only rely on history to the extent it informs the present and should allow public policy to openly and rationally influence the law. The effect of Holmes's words can be found in legal realism and in subsequent movements such as law and society and law and literature.
Publication Name: Harvard Law Review
Subject: Law
ISSN: 0017-811X
Year: 1997
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Law as the continuation of God by other means
Article Abstract:
Jurisprudential arguments often adopt reasoning similar to that found in theological arguments in favor of the existence of God. Despite the secular attitudes of many legal scholars, their arguments contain cosmological and ontological components. In specific, they attempt to argue for a specific legal position or state that they desire by asserting that the necessary preconditions for this state exist. Such arguments, which are fundamentally about belief, borrow from theological arguments.
Publication Name: California Law Review
Subject: Law
ISSN: 0008-1221
Year: 1997
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