Book Review: Human Law and Human Justice
| Author | P. H. Partridge |
| DOI | 10.1177/0067205X6600200112 |
| Published date | 01 March 1966 |
| Date | 01 March 1966 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
140
Federal Law Review
[VOLUME
2
Professor Sawer,
at
the end
of
his book, suggests that it seems impossible
that law and lawyers should ever again be inattentive to the social relations
of
law
or
to the part which natural science and systematized social know-
ledge can play in solving legal problems.
It
is
to be hoped that this judg-
ment
is
well
founded and certainly this book will assist in transforming
it from aprediction into areality.
It
is
thus to be welcomed and strongly
recommended to every lawyer, whether he be judge, practitioner, or
student, who
is
interested in something more than the technical practice
of
his profession.
PETER
BRETT*
Human Law and Human Justice
by
JULIUS
STONE,
LL.M.
(Leeds);
S.J.D.
(Harvard);
B.A.,
D.C.L.
(Oxford); Sydney. Maitland Publications
Pty Ltd, Sydney,
1965,
pp. i-xxiii,
1-415.
This
is
the second
of
what Professor Stone calls
the'
successor volumes '
of
The Province and Function
of
Law; the first
of
them, Legal System
and Lawyers' Reasonings, was reviewed by Dr. Stoljar in this Review.1
As the latter book was arewriting
of
Part I
of
The Province and Function,
so this
is
anew version
of
its Part II, there called "Law and Justice".
Considerable parts
of
the earlier text are reproduced and the original
framework followed (in both cases, however, with much rearrangement
and revision), but this
is
in effect anew and independent work. Avery
great deal
of
new material has been introduced -partly in
e},(tension
of
the scope
of
the original version (e.g., the chapters on the idea
of
justice
in Greek mythology and philosophy and in early Jewish thought); partly
to take account
of
original work that has appeared since the publication
of
The Province and Function (e.g., the examination
of
work on law and
justice by British and American analytic and linguistic philosophers);
partly also to take account
of
new scholarly and critical work dealing
with the great figures in the history
of
legal philosophy; and partly by
way
of
elaborating and deepening the discussion
of
men and subjects
already considered in detail in the original work. The most notable
examples
of
this are, perhaps, the very substantial development
of
the
discussion
of
natural law in which Stone now not only deals with natural
law as ahistorical tradition, but also examines it much more closely
as aphilisophical-Iegal doctrine in its own right and considers much
more minutely the natural law theorising
of
quite recent times; and
also the much closer and fuller examination
of
modern legal relativism.
But there
is
hardly any part
of
the earlier book that has not undergone
some amendment or development.
It
is
more than twice as long as the section in The Province andFunction
from which it derives. But wider scope and greater length are not the
most striking difference between the two versions. Most
of
the
text"
*LL.B. (Lond.), LL.M. (W. Aust.), S.J.D. (Harv.), Professor
of
Jurisprudence~
University
of
Melbourne.
1Vol.
1,
No.2.
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