The Spirit of the Common Law

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Marshall Jones Company, 1921 - 224 pages
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Page 53 - Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights, as modelled by the municipal law.
Page 75 - And it appears in our books, that in many cases, the common law will control acts of parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void: for when an act of parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such act to be void.
Page 61 - Judges: to which it was answered by me, that true it was, that God had endowed his Majesty with excellent science, and great endowments of nature ; but his Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England; and causes which concern the life, or inheritance, or goods, or fortunes of his subjects, are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of law, which law is an act which requires long study and experience, before that a man can attain to the cognizance...
Page 61 - Majesty with excellent science, and great endowments of nature; but his Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England, and causes which concern the life, or inheritance, or goods or fortunes of his subjects, are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of the law, which law is an art which requires long study and experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it...
Page xii - The real danger to administration of. justice according to law is in timid resistance to rational improvement and obstinate persistence in legal paths which have become impossible in the heterogeneous, urban, industrial America of today. Such things have been driving us fast to an administrative justice through boards and commissions, with loosely defined powers, unlimited discretion and inadequate judicial restraints, which is at variance with the genius of our legal and political institutions.
Page 188 - ... and his family, but that the creditor must take a risk also — either along with, or even in some cases instead of, the debtor. Fifth, there is a tendency to revive the primitive idea of liability without fault, not only in the form of wide responsibility for agencies employed, but in placing upon an enterprise the burden of repairing injuries without fault of him who conducts it which are incident to the undertaking. What...
Page 61 - Exchequer, that the King in his own person cannot adjudge any case, either criminal, as treason, felony, etc., or betwixt party and party, concerning his inheritance, chattels, or goods, etc., but this ought to be determined and adjudged in some court of justice according to the law and custom of England...
Page 191 - It is not a conflict between good men and bad. Instead it is an intellectual conflict. It is a war of ideas not of men; a clash between old ideas and new ideas, a contest between the conceptions of our traditional law and modern juristic conceptions born of a new movement in all the social sciences.
Page 91 - A legal system attains the ends of the legal order (1) by recognizing certain interests, individual, public, and social; (2) by defining the limits within which these interests shall be recognized legally and given effect through legal precepts; and (3) by endeavoring to secure the interests so recognized within the defined limits.
Page 99 - While the lawyer believes that the principles of law are absolute, eternal, and of universal validity, and that law is found, not made, the people believe no less firmly that it may be made and that they have the power to make it. While to the lawyer the state enforces law because it is law, to the people law is law because the state, reflecting their desires, has so willed.

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