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HISTORY, TRADITION AND SOCIOLOGY

times, its energy was very likely exaggerated by Blackstone and his followers. "Today we recognize," in the words of Pound,[1] "that the custom is a custom of judicial decision, not of popular action." It is "doubtful,” says Gray,[2] "whether at all stages of legal history, rules laid down by judges have not generated custom, rather than custom generated the rules." In these days, at all events, we look to custom, not so much for the creation of new rules, but for the tests and standards that are to determine how established rules shall be applied. When custom seeks to do more than this, there is a growing tendency in the law to leave development to legislation. Judges do not feel the same need of putting the imprimatur of law upon customs of recent growth, knocking for entrance into the legal system, and viewed askance because of some novel aspect of form or feature, as they would if legislatures were not in frequent session, capable of establishing a title that will be unimpeached and unimpeach-

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  1. "Common Law and Legislation," 21 Harvard L. R. 383, 406.
  2. Supra, sec. 634.