"In the same way it might be said that the maturity of law came to be unmoral in that in its insistence upon abstract equality and security for the maximum of individual self-assertion it took no account of the moral worth of the concrete individual."A generation ago, when the law schools of our state universi ties were first founded, the dominion of law appeared to be complete. Almost every phase of public and of individual activity was subject to judicial review. It was taken to be an axiom that the people themselves were subject to certain fundamental limitations, running back of all constitutions and inherent in the very nature of free government, and it was assumed without serious question that the scope and the extent of these limitations were questions of law.
Administration was subjected to strict judicial control, and almost
every measure of police encountered an injunction as a matter of course. We
were proud to have achieved a government of laws and not of men, and we looked
down complacently upon the bureau-ridden peoples of Europe without a suspicion
of being law-ridden ourselves. So important was the role of law in
connection with every aspect of social and governmental activity that one need
not wonder that in the West the state itself undertook to provide for public
instruction in law as a part of its broad programme of popular education.
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