Liberty of Contract

Protection against Eugenics: A Comparison of Two Jurisprudences

“…30 The idea that government should somehow strive to be "neutral" in the struggle between powerful industrial magnates and impoverished factory workers seemed both selfdeceptive and an abdication of moral responsibility. 31 Progressives believed that conscious, intelligent action on the part of the government would ameliorate the plight of the working poor and solve social problems that would otherwise be left unsolved.…”

Felix Frankfurter and his Protégés: Re-examining the “Happy Hot Dogs”

“…The sociological movement in jurisprudence, the movement for pragmatism as a philosophy of law, the movement for the adjustment of principles and doctrines to the human conditions they are to govern rather than to assume first principles, the movement for putting the human factor in the central place and relegating logic to its true position as an instrument, has scarcely shown itself as yet in America. 36 Pound recruited faculty to Harvard who shared his belief that the law was vital to promoting good governance and furthering the betterment of the human condition in an increasingly complex, industrial society. He found an able intellectual kinsman in Felix Frankfurter.…”

The Powers of Application

“…See Atria 1999a). Pound defined the concept of an ideal of law as a "basic mental picture of the end or purpose of social control […], of what we are seeking to achieve through adjustment of relations and ordering of conduct by systematic application of the force of politically organized society" (Pound 1958, 5;Pound's entire paragraph was quoted above at page 365). Here Pound was, however, smuggling in part of his own ideal of the law: He was working at the wrong level of abstraction.…”