A Conflict with Oblivion: Some Observations on the Founders of Legal Pragmatism

The legal profession does not enjoy a reputation among laymen for undue modesty. Lawyers have not been backward in publicizing their contributions to government and to political thought. Yet, strangely, most lawyers have failed to assert, as they might, that from lawyerdom have emanated other kinds of ideas, once technically legal, which subsequently, in nonlegal form, have profoundly affected other thought-fields. Consider, for instance, the idea of cause. It began as a legal notion in the Greek courts, where cause originally denoted responsibility or guilt; something of that meaning it long retained when it spread into scientific and philosophic discourse. Helen Silving tells us that the term \u27facts\u27 in the sense of realities (actual happenings) has its origin in the law and was thereafter adopted by other disciplines and common usages, and not vice versa, as is generally assumed. \u27 Lon Fuller reminds us that average –which represents a crucial concept in modern physical science and in life insurance– is a law word. The Socratic method was transplanted from the methods of the courts. The legal, philosophic and scientific concepts of law have often interacted. The logic of discovery (or of invention ) has its roots in lawyers\u27 techniques