The New State by Mary Parker Follett — Read

But perhaps nowhere in our national life is the growing recognition of the group or community principle so fundamental for us as in our modern theory of law. Mr. Roscoe Pound has opened a new future for America by his exposition of modern law, an exposition which penetrates and illumines every department of our thought. Let us speak briefly of this modern theory of law. It is: (1) that law is the outcome of our community life, (2) that it must serve, not individuals, but the community.

Mr. Pound, in a series of articles on "The Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence" in the Harvard Law Review (1910–1912), points out that it was an epoch-making moment when attention began to be turned from the nature of law to its purpose. The old conception of law was that "new situations are to be met always by deductions from old principles. " The new school (headed by Jhering) believe that "law is a product of conscious and increasingly determinate human will. " "Legal doctrines and legal interests do not work themselves out blindly, but have been fashioned by human wants to meet human needs. " Before Jhering the theory of law had been individualistic; Jhering's is a social theory of law. "The eighteenth century conceived of law as something which the individual invoked against society; . Jhering taught that it was something created by society through which the individual found a means of securing his interests, so far as society recognized them. " And Jhering called his a jurisprudence of realities; he wanted legal precepts worked out and tested by results. For instance, if a rule of commercial law were in question, the search should be for the rule which best accords with and gives effect to sound business practice.48