Roscoe Pound believed that unless the criminal justice system maintains stability while adapting to change, it will either fossilize or be subject to the whims of public opinion. In Criminal Justice in America, Pound recognizes the dangers law faces when it does not keep pace with societal change. When the home, neighborhood, and religion are no longer capable of social control, increased conflicts arise, laws proliferate, and new menaces wrought by technology, drugs, and juvenile delinquency flourish. Where Pound saw the influence of the motion pictures as part of the "multiplication of the agencies of menace," today we might cite television and the Internet. His point still holds true: The "old machinery" cannot meet the evolving needs of society. In Criminal Justice in America,Pound points out that one aspect of the criminal justice problem is a rigid mechanical approach that resists change. The other dimension of the problem is that change, when it comes, will result from the pressure of public opinion. Justice suffers when the public is moved by the oldest of public feelings, vengeance. This can result in citizens taking the law into their own hands--from tax evasion to mob lynchings--as well as in altering the judicial system--from sensationalizing trials to producing wrongful convictions. Ron Christenson, in his new introduction, discusses the evolution of Roscoe Pound's career and thought. Pound's theories on jurisprudence were remarkably prescient. They continue to gain resonance as crimes become more and more sensationalized by the media.Criminal Justice in America is a fascinating study that should be read by legal scholars and professionals, sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers.
Social Control Through Law is remarkable in manner and style. Roscoe Pound shows himself to be a jurist, philosopher, and scientist. For Pound, the subject matter of law involves examining manifestations of human nature which require social control to assert or realize individual expectations. Pound formulates a list of social-ethical principles, with a three-fold purpose. First, they are meant to identify and explain human claims, demands, or interests of a given social order. Second, they express what the majority of individuals in a given society want the law to do. Third, they are meant to guide the courts in applying the law. Pound distinguishes between individual interests, public interests, and social interests. He warns that these three types of interests are overlapping and interdependent and that most claims, demands, and desires can be placed in all three categories. Pound's theory of social interests is crucial to his thinking about law and lies at the conceptual core of sociological jurisprudence. Pound explains that rights unlike interests, are plagued with a multiplicity of meanings. He rejects the idea of rights as being natural or inalienable, and argues that to the contrary, interests are natural. The contemporary significance of the book is aptly demonstrated by the skyrocketing rate of litigation in our postmodern society. As the influence of familial and religious institutions declines, the courts exert an unprecedented degree of control over the public and private lives of most Americans. Law is now the paramount agency of social control. In the new introduction, A. Javier TreviNo outlines the principal aspects of Roscoe Pound's legal philosophy as it is conveyed in several of his books, articles, and addresses, and shows their relationship to Social Control Through Law. This book is an insightful, concise summary of Pound's ideas that, after more than half a century, remains surprisingly fresh and relevant. It will doubtlessly continue to engage jurists, legal theorists, and sociologists for many years to come.
New Paths Dissects the Legal Trends of Late 1940s Notable for their conservatism, which became more pronounced in subsequent publications, these lectures reflect on developments in the international legal order during the late 1940s. Pound detected three legal "paths" those of liberty, humanitarianism and authoritarianism. The first, which he endorses, seeks to realize a maximum of free individual self assertion. Legal humanitarianism, which he criticizes heavily, is the expansion of injury law to include social redress and consumer protection. His antipathy toward the authoritarian path goes beyond a condemnation of authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union to a rejection of any form of social legislation, such as socialized medicine or state-run pensions. These lectures were delivered at the University of Nebraska (where Pound had been dean of the College of Law from 1902-1907) and marked the establishment of the Roscoe Pound Lectureship Series. "This book, . . . by its very thinness may succeed in luring attention away from competing attractions, since here one may, with the expenditure of only a little time, obtain the reaction of one of the giants of jurisprudence to our confused, complex and turbulent modern legal scene." --North Carolina Review 93 (1950-1951) 29 Roscoe Pound [1870-1964] was a pre-eminent legal educator, scholar and prolific author. A professor at Harvard Law School for most of his career, and its dean from 1916-1936, he taught throughout the world in his later years. His five volume Jurisprudence (1959) is considered one of the most important contributions to the world's legal literature of the twentieth century.
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