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THE JUDGE AS A LEGISLATOR

may go without traveling beyond the walls of the interstices cannot be staked out for him upon a chart. He must learn it for himself as he gains the sense of fitness and proportion that comes with years of habitude in the practice of an art. Even within the gaps, restrictions not easy to define, but felt, however impalpable they may be, by every judge and lawyer, hedge and circumscribe his action. They are established by the traditions of the centuries, by the example of other judges, his predecessors and his colleagues, by the collective judgment of the profession, and by the duty of adherence to the pervading spirit of the law. "Il ne peut intervenir," says Charmont,[1] "que pour suppléer les sources formelles, mais il n'a pas, dans cette mesure même, toute latitude pour créer des règles de droit. Il ne peut ni faire échec aux principes généraux de notre organisation juridique, explicitement on implicitement consacrés, ni formuler une réglementation de detail pour l'exercise de certains droits, en établissant des

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  1. "La Renaissance du droit naturel," p. 181.