Casting the Spell: The New Haven School of International Law

Abstract

In what must be a virtually unsurpassed record of forbearance, Professors Myres McDougal and Harold Lasswell polished and perfected the huge manuscript that was to become Jurisprudence for a Free Society for several decades after it was ready for publication in virtually its present form.Such perfectionism exhibited and confirmed a deep commitment by the authors to the most precise possible formulation of their jurisprudential position.It also represented great confidence that their influence would be exerted in a literal and comprehensive fashion, that readers would be guided quite specifically in their thinking about law through a study of this text.Only time will tell whether this preoccupation with precision that delayed publication more than thirty years was warranted.McDougal and Lasswell locate their endeavor in an evolutionary process of thinking about law, repudiating naturalism because of its supraempirical claims of validation, and positivism because of its formalistic reliance on logical derivations of legal decisions from abstract doctrines.'They perceive American legal realism as an antecedent to their work, admirable for its critical focus on the interplay between rules and social process in the enunciation of law in authoritative form, especially through the operations of appellate courts. 2 Indeed, the McDougal and Lasswell undertaking can be regarded as converting the core insight of legal realism into a comprehensive framework of inquiry, including the provision of a normative rudder-the eight constituent values of a free society dedicated to the promotion of human dignity-by