Allocating Public Burdens: The Social Ethics Implied in Brandeis of Boston
In January of 1897 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, invited an audience at Boston University's School of Law to reconsider the relationship between morality and the common law. Hoping to persuade his listeners that law ought to be kept quite distinc...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1983
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1983, Volume: 1, Issue: 1, Pages: 59-78 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In January of 1897 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, invited an audience at Boston University's School of Law to reconsider the relationship between morality and the common law. Hoping to persuade his listeners that law ought to be kept quite distinct from morality, he explored several areas of the law in which the confusion of law and morality was particularly troublesome. "Nowhere is the confusion between legal and moral ideals more manifest than in the law of contract. …" According to Holmes, "the duty to keep a contract at common law means a prediction that you must pay damages if you do not keep it—and nothing else. …" Furthermore, and as if to anticipate the objections of those who might tend to see moral obligations entailed in contracts, he added: "But such a mode of looking at the matter stinks in the nostrils of those who think it advantageous to get as much ethics into the law as they can." |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051073 |