Abstract
This is the study of one man’s ideas about the law. It will attempt to systematically and critically assess the ideas of a modern American legal thinker, the late Judge Jerome Frank, who was a leading exponent of the so-called school of American “legal realism.”
Social science can thus in the long run best attain its goal when those who cultivate it care more for the scientific game itself and for the meticulous adherence to its rules of evidence than for any of the uses to which their discoveries can be put....
Morris R. Cohen
...In spite of all the irrefutable logic of the realists, men insist upon believing that there are fundamental principles of law which exist apart from any particular case, or any particular activity; that these principles must be sought with a reverent attitude; that they are being improved constantly; and that our sacrifices of efficiency and humanitarianism in their honor are leading us to a better government. The truth of such a philosophy cannot be demonstrated or proved. It exists only because we seem unable to find comfort without it.
Thurman W. Arnold
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Nature; An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931), p. 349.
Thurman W. Arnold, The Symbols of Government (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1935), pp. 32–33.
A civilization is, however, something more than a complex of institutions; it always embodies a system of ideas, an ideology. Whether such ideologies have clearly come into the consciousness of the members of a community, whether they are only dimly and vaguely apprehended, whether they remain quite completely within the field of the sub-conscious, they constitute the counterpart, the reflex, the reciprocal, of the system of institutions. Institutions and ideologies are the warp and woof of the fabric of history. A study of either by itself is incomplete and misleading….“ Walter J. Shepard, ”Democracy in Transition, 29 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 1–2 (1935).
For example, I found 37 book reviews of Law and the Modern Mind. 31 of them in law journals. In the case of Courts on Trial, I found 40 book reviews, 31 of them in law journals. Of the 62 reviews of these two books published in various law journals, a large number were written by prominent figures in American law. In my opinion, this in no way indicates the quality of Frank’s writing, but it does show the wide interest in his work. Very few other books in the field of American jurisprudence attracted so many reviewers.
I discussed this problem in more detail in a paper, “Concerning Value-Judgments in Political Science,” which I delivered at the first conference of the International Society For General Semantics at the University of Chicago, June 22, 1951.
For the details of the exciting and at times tumultuous early days of the New Deal, the reader should consult the numerous histories of the New Deal era of American politics.
William Seagle wrote the following about Frank’s appointment to the federal bench: “… His elevation to the bench last year was itself something of a presidential coup d’ etat. It was perhaps his [Roosevelt’s] happiest appointment. For, as those who follow the whirligig of jurisprudential theory must be aware, Jerome Frank did not entertain conventional views of the nature of the judicial process… His appointment therefore might be likened to the choice of a heretic to be a bishop of the Church of Rome.” Book Review, If Men Were Angels, 29 Va. L. Rev. 664 (1943).
Most of this information was found in Current Biography (1941), pp. 301–03, and in 28 Who’s Who in America 915 (1954–55 ed.).
The New York Times called Frank a “philosopher of law” in an obituary of January 14, 1957, p. 23. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch devoted an editorial entitled “A Judge With Open Eyes” in which they said: “The American judiciary could hardly afford to lose Judge Jerome N. Frank of the United States Court of Appeals at New York, dead in New Haven of a heart attack. And the American people can ill afford the relative reluctance to follow his many suggestions for making a reality of `equal justice before the law.’… Judge Frank was not a muckraker of the law, but agreed with Justice Holmes that ‘one may criticize what one reveres.’ He sought improvement, and not altogether in vain…. He was one of Franklin D Roosevelt’s ’brain trusters.’ But we may be sure that he would have sacrificed all else to give American people courts ever more accessible and ever more fair.” (January 15, 1957, page 2C). For a rather interesting account of Frank during his days as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, see the portrait, “Intellectual on the Spot,” 35 Time, March 11, 1940, pp. 71–77.
See 66 Yale L.J. 817–32 (1957) and 24 U. Chi. L. Rev. 625–708 (1957), memorial issues devoted to Jerome Frank; Edward McWhinney; Edward McWhinney, “Judge Jerome Frank and Legal Realism: An Appraisal,” 3 N.Y.L. Forum 113 (1957) and Book Review, Not Guilty, 33 Ind. L.J. 111 (1957); “Jerome N. Frank, 1889–1957,” which contains the memorials delivered at the special joint meeting of the New York County Lawyers’ Association and The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, May 23, 1957; and Edmond N. Cahn, “Fact-Skepticism and Fundamental Law,” 33 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1 (1958).
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1959 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Paul, J. (1959). Introduction. In: The Legal Realism of Jerome N. Frank. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9493-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9493-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-011-8684-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-9493-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive