lem or as a sportsman's game. Our own Wigmore has done much to make that conception out of date.[1] We are thinking of the end which the law serves, and fitting its rules to the task of service.
This conception of the end of the law as determining the direction of its growth, which was Jhering's great contribution to the theory of jurisprudence,[2] finds its organon, its instrument, in the method of sociology. Not the origin, but the goal, is the main thing. There can be no wisdom in the choice of a path unless we know where it will lead. The teleological conception of his function must be ever in the judge's mind. This means, of course, that the juristic philosophy of the common law is at bottom the philosophy of pragmatism.[3] Its truth is relative, not absolute. The rule that functions well produces
- ↑ See his Treatise on Evidence, passim.
- ↑ Jhering, "Zweck im Recht," 5 Modern Legal Philosophy Series; also Gény, op. cit., vol. I, p. 8; Pound, "Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence," 25 Harvard L. R. 140, 141, 145; Pound, "Mechanical Jurisprudence," 8 Columbia L. R. 603, 610.
- ↑ 10 Pound, "Mechanical Jurisprudence," 8 Columbia L. R. 603, 609.
