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HISTORY, TRADITION AND SOCIOLOGY

to foreign jurists.[1] "The general framework furnished by the statute is to be filled in for each case by means of interpretation, that is, by following out the principles of the statute. In every case, without exception, it is the business of the court to supply what the statute omits, but always by means of an interpretative function.[2] If the statute is interpreted by the method of "free decision," the process differs in degree rather than in kind from the process followed by the judges of England and America in the development of the common law. Indeed, Ehrlich in a recent book[3] quotes approvingly an English writer, who says[4] that "a code would not, except in a few cases, in which the law at present is obscure, limit any discretion now pos-

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  1. Modern Legal Philosophy Series, pp. 159-163, 172-175; cf. Ehrlich, "Die juristische Logik," 215, 216; Zitelmann, "Lücken im Recht," 23; Brütt, "Die Kunst der Rechtsandwendung," p. 75; Stammler, "Lebre von dem Richtigen Rechts," p. 271.
  2. Kiss, "Equity and Law," 9 Modern Legal Philosophy Series, p. 161.
  3. "Grundlegung der Soziologie des Rechts" [1913], p. 234.
  4. 19 L, Q. R. 15.