Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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SUPREME COURT ,D.C. W ASHiNGT ON 1 945 October, d Roscoe Pound by his protound studies and varie ' i ce among American schoiars. ' d activities has a unique p a iedge oi iegai subiects an By reason oi his wide icnow his rare taient tor exposition he has been a briiiiant teacher. His writings constitute a notabie contribution the science ot iurisprudence. He has aiso been a biems oi the courts and to tudent oi the practicai pro nd administrative ciose s eatiy aided in promoting sou has gr measures. WWW

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From Lord Wright of urley I am honored at being invited by the Chairman of the Harvard Law School Yearbook Committee to make a short contribution to the Harvard Law School Yearbook to the dedicatory section, in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of Roscoe Pound. His name is honored and his works are studied in every part of the Common Law World and I should add by legal thinkers in every quarter of the globe. I write as an English student and practitioner of the Common Law in its Old Home. , I cannot express how much I owe to the inspiration and instruction of Dean Roscoe Pound as scholar, thinker and expositor. The im- mense range ofhis learning and thought may be gathered from his Outline ofj urisprudence which, as he says, represents over fifty years study, and forty years teaching, ofjurisprudence. It should be the 1'dlfC'IllC't'lll1l of every lawyer. It is so much more than a bibliography. It will give germinal ideas to the lawyer on every topic with which he is likely to be confronted. But Pound has never been mastered by his learning, immense as it is. Mem agiml molem. His more detailed writings convey to the reader not only rich and accurate analysis and exposition, but above all, they con- vey the impression ofa vivid personality inspired by a liberal and humanitarian philosophy of the individual and corporate life in all its various aspects which fall within the sphere of law. He is not hidebound by formulas and dogmas repeated from generation to generation of lawyers. He looks behind them to see how they square with the realities of things, and to see what is the residuum of truth which they contain. In particular, he seeks to equate them, as far as may be, with the requirements of modern thought and ideals. And at the back of his mind, there is ever active and operating the idea of justice, the idea that first and last the quest of justice is the purpose of law. Law is not for him a self-sufficient and independent end, but is the means to a realization of justice. May I quote once more a memorable and characteristic passage fone out of many availablej: A theory, he says, which leaves out of account the quest of jurists and judges for an ideal of absolute, eternal justice, well or ill conceived, to which they seek to make the rules enforced in tribunals approximate as far as possible . . . ignores the chief influences in determining the bulk ofthe rules actually in force in any legal system at any given time. To have pursued the search, in his writings and teachings, for this essential idea of justice, through all the mazes of particular rules and forms, is an even greater achievement than all his contributions of learning and exposition, immense as they are. r Illl