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THE JUDGE AS A LEGISLATOR

a title deed to recognition. Only in determinizing how it functions we must not view it too narrowly. We must not sacrifice the general to the particular. We must not throw to the winds the advantages of consistency and uniformity to do justice in the instance.[1] We must keep within those interstitial limits which precedent and custom and the long and silent and almost indefinable practice of other judges through the centuries of the common law have set to judge-made innovations. But within the limits thus set, within the range over which choice moves, the final principle of selection for judges, as for legislators, is one of fitness to an end. "Le but est la vie interne, l'âme cachée, mais génératrice, de tous les droits."[2] We do not pick our rules of law full-blossomed from the trees. Every judge consulting his own experience must be conscious of times when a free exercise of will, directed of

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  1. Cf. Brütt, supra, pp. 161, 163.
  2. Saleilles, “De la Personnalité Juridique," p. 497. "Avec Jhering nous resterons des réalistes, mais avec lui aussi nous serons des idéalistes, attachés à l'idée de but et de finalité sociale."—Saleilles, p. 516.