Book Reviews

It took a political, economic and jurisprudential upheaval, revolutionary in its ultimate effect if not in its immediate method, to confirm for American constitutional law, the observation of Justice Holmes that the "life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience." Sociological jurisprudence has carried the field before it; its devotees populate the judiciary, the bar, and the rostrum. Most all of them agree that the "felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed."' The syllogism is dead: Long live sociological constitutional law! Yet, as the cheering subsides and we revert to the business of studying, appraising, and prophesying the course of American constitutional law, the task may be no easier under the rule of the sociologist than it was under that of the logician. Both have their complexities. It is to furnish an understanding of the range and scope of these problems as they beset the United States Supreme Court that Professor Freund has presented us with the published edition of three stimulating lectures which he delivered under the auspices of the Julius Rosenthal Foundation of the Northwestern University School of Law, in April 1949. Few are the eccentrics who cling to the Blackstonian myth that "judges do not create, but merely find the law." The myth is exposed, but the true facts, as is so often the case, are tougher to understand than the fairy tale which they displaced. How does the Court make law? Why? In what frame of reference? When? It is to this type of inquiry that Professor Freund's book is addressed. No pretense is made of detailed study of the Court's philosophy, personnel, or method. The three essays contained therein have been selected for the prime purpose of introducing to us the difficult problem of the One and the Many in our judicial system, i.e. one Supreme Court and many states, many courts, and many organs of government, with this one Supreme Court "speaking with many, often discontentingly many, voices." The first essay, entitled "Concord and Discord," is perhaps the best from the point of view of executing the purpose of the book. The main theme of this