In brief, there are jural principles which limit the freedom of the judge,[1] and, indeed, in the view of some writers, which we do not need to endorse, the freedom of the state itself.[2] Life may be lived, conduct may be ordered, it is lived and ordered, for unnumbered human beings without bringing them within the field where the law can be misread, unless indeed the misreading be accompanied by conscious abuse of power. Their conduct never touches the borderland, the penumbra, where controversy begins. They go from birth to death, their action restrained at every turn by the power of the state, and not once do they appeal to judges to mark the boundaries between right and wrong. I am unable to withhold the name of law from rules which exercise this compulsion over the fortunes of mankind.[3]
- ↑ Salmond, "Jurisprudence," p. 157; Sadler, "Relation of Law to Custom," pp. 4, 6, 50; F. A. Geer, 9 L. Q. R. 153.
- ↑ Duguit, "Law and The State," 31 Harvard L. R. 1; Vinogradoff, “The Crisis of Modern Jurisprudence," 29 Yale L. J. 312; Laski, "Authority in the Modern State," pp. 41, 42.
- ↑ "Law is the body of general principles and of particular rules in accordance with which civil rights are created and regulated, and wrongs prevented or redressed" (Beale, "Conflict of Laws," p. 132, sec. 114).
