Year: 1972
Type: article
Abstract: In his little book The Morality of Law, Lon Fuller relates an allegory about a King Rex who sets out to reform the legal system of his kingdom.Upon assuming the throne, King Rex repeals all existing law and, lacking the confidence to write a new code, begins the process of developing new rules on a case-by-case basis.In this way under the stimulus of a variety of cases he hoped that his latent powers of generalization might develop and, proceeding case by case, he would gradually work out a system of rules that could be incorporated in a code.Unfortunately the defects in his education were more deep-seated than he had supposed.The venture failed completely.After he had handed down liteally hundreds of decisions neither he nor his subjects could detect in those decisions any pattern whatsoever.Such tentatives toward generalization as were to be found in his opinions only compounded the confusion, for they gave false leads to his subjects and threw his own meager powers of judgment off balance in the decision of later cases.
Source: The Yale Law Journal
DOI: 10.2307/795198
Authors: J. Skelly Wright, Kenneth Culp Davis
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2797276583