Legal and Institutional Methods Applied to the Debiting of Direct Discounts. VI

Abstract

The study of which this series is an account was undertaken, it is true, because it was doubted that legal method, the manipulation of legal abstractions and propositions of "law" found in opinions and briefs, is a device for observing and stating the causal relation between past and future decisions and because it was doubted that, in some fields, there is a direct relation between them which is significant for forecasting. That these doubts are reasonable has been argued; but the study has not attempted the ambitious project of establishing the negatives which the doubts imply. Nor is there need that it should. The office of belief in their reasonableness is to open the mind to the alternative possibilities and, by aggravating curiosity, to prompt the formulation of precise hypotheses for investigation.