An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law by Roscoe Pound (free novels to read .txt) 📕

In the two ways just explained, through partition and through the idea of self-acquired property, individual interests in property came to be recognized throughout the law. Except for the institution of community property between husband and wife in civil-law countries, or as it is called the matrimonial property regime, there is practically nothing left of the old system of recognized group interests. And even this remnant of household group ownership is dissolving. All legally recognized interests of substance in developed legal systems are normally individual interests. To the historical jurist of the nineteenth century, this fact, coupled with the development of ownership out of possession, served to show us the idea which was realizing in human experience of the administration of justice and to confirm the position reached by the metaphysical jurists. Individual private property was a corollary of liberty and hence law was not thinkable without it. Even if we do not adopt the metaphysical part of this argument and if we give over the idealistic-political interpretation of legal history which it involves, there is much which is attractive in the theory of the historical jurists of the last century. Yet as we look at certain movements in the law there are things to give us pause. For one thing, the rise and growth of ideas of "negotiability," the development of the maxim possession vaut titre in Continental law, and the cutting down in other ways of the sphere of recognition of the interest of the owner in view of the exigencies of the social interest in the security of transactions, suggests that the tendency involved in the first of the two propositions relied on by the historical school has passed its meridian. The Roman doctrine that no one may transfer a greater title than he has is continually giving way before the demand for securing of business transactions had in good faith. And in Roman law in its maturity the rules that restricted acquisition by adverse possession and enabled the owner in many cases to reclaim after any lapse of time were superseded by a decisive limitation of actions which cut off all claims. The modern law in countries which take their law from Rome has developed this decisive limitation. Likewise in our law the hostility to the statute of limitations, so marked in eighteenth-century decisions, has given way to a policy of upholding it. Moreover the rapid rise in recent times of limitations upon the ius disponendi, the imposition of restrictions in order to secure the social interest in the conservation of natural resources, and English projects for cutting off the ius abutendi of the landowner, could be interpreted by the nineteenth-century historical jurists only as marking a retrograde development. When we add that with the increase in number and influence of groups in the highly organized society of today a tendency is manifest to recognize practically and in back-handed ways group property in what are not legal entities, it becomes evident that the segment of experience at which the historical jurists were looking was far too short to justify a dogmatic conclusion, even admitting the validity of their method.

It remains to consider some twentieth-century theories. These have not been worked out with the same elaboration and systematic detail as those of the past, and as yet one may do no more than sketch them.

An instinctive claim to control natural objects is an individual interest of which the law must take account. This instinct has been the basis of psychological theories of private property. But thus far these theories have been no more than indicated. They might well be combined with the historical theory, putting a psychological basis in place of the nineteenth-century metaphysical foundation. A social-psychological legal history might achieve much in this connection.

Of sociological theories, some are positivist, some psychological and some social-utilitarian. An excellent example of the first is Duguit's deduction from social interdependence through similarity of interest and through division of labor. He has but sketched this theory, but his discussion contains many valuable suggestions. He shows clearly enough that the law of property is becoming socialized. But, as he points out, this does not mean that property is becoming collective. It means that we are ceasing to think of it in terms of private right and are thinking of it in terms of social function. If one doubts this he should reflect on recent rent legislation, which in effect treats the renting of houses as a business affected with a public interest in which reasonable rates must be charged as by a public utility. Also it means that cases of legal application of wealth to collective uses are becoming continually more numerous. He then argues that the law of property answers to the economic need of applying certain wealth to definite individual or collective uses and the consequent need that society guarantee and protect that application. Hence, he says, society sanctions acts which conform to those uses of wealth which meet that economic need, and restrains acts of contrary tendency. Thus property is a social institution based upon an economic need in a society organized through division of labor. It will be seen that the results and the attitude toward the law of property involved are much the same as those which are reached from the social-utilitarian standpoint.

Psychological sociological theories have been advanced chiefly in Italy. They seek the foundation of property in an instinct of acquisitiveness, considering it a social development or social institution on that basis.

Social-utilitarian theories explain and justify property as an institution which secures a maximum of interests or satisfies a maximum of wants, conceiving it to be a sound and wise bit of social engineering when viewed with reference to its results. This is the method of Professor Ely's well-known book on Property and Contract. No one has yet done so, but I suspect one might combine this mode of thought with the civilization interpretation of the Neo-Hegelians and argue that the system of individual property, on the whole, conduces to the maintaining and furthering of civilization—to the development of human powers to the most of which they are capable—instead of viewing it as a realization of the idea of civilization as it unfolds in human experience. Perhaps the theories of the immediate future will run along some such lines. For we have had no experience of conducting civilized society on any other basis, and the waste and friction involved in going to any other basis must give us pause. Moreover, whatever we do, we must take account of the instinct of acquisitiveness and of individual claims grounded thereon. We may believe that the law of property is a wise bit of social engineering in the world as we know it, and that we satisfy more human wants, secure more interests, with a sacrifice of less thereby than by anything we are likely to devise—we may believe this without holding that private property is eternally and absolutely necessary and that human society may not expect in some civilization, which we cannot forecast, to achieve something different and something better.

Wealth, in a commercial age, is made up largely of promises. An important part of everyone's substance consists of advantages which others have promised to provide for or to render to him; of demands to have the advantages promised which he may assert not against the world at large but against particular individuals. Thus the individual claims to have performance of advantageous promises secured to him. He claims the satisfaction of expectations created by promises and agreements. If this claim is not secured friction and waste obviously result, and unless some countervailing interest must come into account which would be sacrificed in the process, it would seem that the individual interest in promised advantages should be secured to the full extent of what has been assured to him by the deliberate promise of another. Let us put this in another way. In a former lecture I suggested, as a jural postulate of civilized society, that in such a society men must be able to assume that those with whom they deal in the general intercourse of the society will act in good faith, and as a corollary must be able to assume that those with whom they so deal will carry out their undertakings according to the expectations which the moral sentiment of the community attaches thereto. Hence, in a commercial and industrial society, a claim or want or demand of society that promises be kept and that undertakings be carried out in good faith, a social interest in the stability of promises as a social and economic institution, becomes of the first importance. This social interest in the security of transactions, as one might call it, requires that we secure the individual interest of the promisee, that is, his claim or demand to be assured in the expectation created, which has become part of his substance.

In civil-law countries the interest of the promisee, and thus the social interest in the security of transactions, is well secured. The traditional requirement of a causa ciuilis, a civil, i.e., legal, reason for enforcing a pact, gave way before natural-law ideas in the eighteenth century. Pothier gave over the contract categories of the Roman law as being "very remote from simplicity." Then came the rise of the will theory of legal transactions in the nineteenth century. French law made intention of gratuitously benefiting another a causa. The Austrian code of 1811 presumed a causa, requiring a promisor to prove there was none. And this means that he must prove the promise was not a legal transaction—that there was no intention to enter into a binding undertaking. In the result, abstract promises, as the civilian calls them, came to be enforced equally with those which came under some formal Roman category and with those having a substantial presupposition. Modern Continental law, apart from certain requirements of proof, resting on the same policy as our Statute of Frauds, asks only, Did the promisor intend to create a binding duty?

Likewise in civil-law countries the enforcing machinery is modern and adequate. The oldest method of enforcement in Roman law was seizure of the person, to coerce satisfaction or hold the promisor in bondage until his kinsmen performed the judgment. Later there was a pecuniary condemnation or, as we should say, a money judgment in all cases, enforced in the classical law by universal execution or, as we should say, by involuntary bankruptcy. But along with this remedy specific relief grew up in the actio arbitraria, a clumsy device of specific performance on the alternative of a heavy money condemnation, which repeated itself in Pennsylvania before equity powers were given the courts, and is substantially repeating in our federal courts in their attempts to apply equitable relief to torts committed in foreign jurisdictions. The civil law developed, or perhaps the canon law developed and the civil law took over, an actio ad implendum or action to require performance, with natural execution, that is a doing by the court or its officers at the expense of the defendant, of that to which he is bound as ascertained by the judgment. In general in civil-law countries today what we call specific performance is the rule. A money reparation for breach of contract is the exceptional remedy. It is only when for some reason specific relief is impracticable or inequitable, as in contracts of personal service, that money relief is resorted to.

In countries governed by