In the Matter of Green v. Recht

Abstract

Let us ask ourselves: What is significance of this historic event? answer lies in a few words, meaning of which we can barely begin to understand. words are: The last bastion has fallen. walls of city have at last been overrun. walls of city were its shelter: they kept out of city what did not belong in it. With its walls overrun, with its walls no longer serving as walls, wall-less, city has lost its power to exclude and expel what does not belong. It has dissolved into what had surrounded it. city no longer is, and we whose home it was have become homeless. We also have ceased to be as people we were. Now remember what Greek poet knew: walls of city are its laws.1 If invasion of law by sciences means that the last bastion has fallen, law and . . . announces our lawlessness, our having been thrown into anonymous mass of stateless people, displaced persons, that roam across surface of earth. How can that be? Let us first clear a few small obstacles that may stand on our way to that thought. First, what is science that has invaded law? It consists of all academic disciplines that not so long ago, in their still unbroken unity, bore name of social physics, or moral science: Economics above all, history, political science, psychology, sociology, even academic philosophy. Yes, even philosophy has lent itself to task of managing masses of mankind adrift. Let us not allow ourselves to be deceived by masks of pure intellect, or knowledge