Storrs Lectures – serie

"Truly scientific in spirit and method, presenting its subject with the balance, restraint and clarity which have marked the author's distinguished service as a judge."—Harlan F. Stone, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1942–1946In this classic treatise a Supreme Court Justice describes in simple and understandable language the conscious and unconscious processes by which a judge decides a case. He discusses the sources of information to which he appeals for guidance and analyzes the contribution that considerations of precedent, logical consistency, custom, social welfare, and standards of justice and morals have in shaping his decisions.

"Among the important books in the history of American legal philosophy.  It includes insights into the relations between morality and law, and advances a theory of law of great practical relevance. . . . [This] is the best discussion of the demands of the rule of law in existing literature."—Robert S. Summers, Journal of Legal Education"Throughout this profound, imaginative and keenly analytical work, [Fuller] demonstrates his continuing concern with the tension in morality and law between the 'is' and the 'ought'. . . . A book of ideas should . . . provoke and contribute new thoughts. This book does both."—Barry R. Mandelbaum, New York Law ForumIn this classic work the legal philosopher Lon L. Fuller explores the relationship between law and morality, distinguishing between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration.

How can we distinguish between injustice and misfortune? What can we learn from the victims of calamity about the sense of injustice they harbor? In this book a distinguished political theorist ponders these and other questions and formulates a new political and moral theory of injustice that encompasses not only deliberate acts of cruelty or unfairness but also indifference to such acts. Judith N. Shklar draws on the writings of Plato, Augustine, and Montaigne, three skeptics who gave the theory of injustice its main structure and intellectual force, as well as on political theory, history, social psychology, and literature from sources as diverse as Rosseau, Dickens, Hardy, and E. L. Doctorow. Shklar argues that we cannot set rigid rules to distinguish instances of misfortune from injustice, as most theories of justice would have us do, for such definitions would not take into account historical variability and differences in perception and interest between the victims and spectators. From the victim's point of view—whether it be one who suffered in an earthquake or as a result of social discrimination—the full definition of injustice must include not only the immediate cause of disaster but also our refusal to prevent and then to mitigate the damage, or what Shklar calls passive injustice. With this broader definition comes a call for greater responsibility from both citizens and public servants. When we attempt to make political decisions about what to do in specific instances of injustice, says Shklar, we must give the victim's voice its full weight. This is in keeping with the best impulses of democracy and is our only alternative to a complacency that is bound to favor the unjust.