William Ernest Hocking: In-Laws

William Ernest Hocking was American philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on in-laws.
William Ernest Hocking: 62   quotes 0   likes

“For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view of law is singularly empty of light and leading.”

Preface (20 May 1926), p. vii.
Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926)
Context: For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view of law is singularly empty of light and leading. In the dispersed sovereignty of modern states, and especially in times of rapid social change, law must look to the future as well as to history and precedent, and to what is possible and right as well as to what is actual.

“Law deals not with actual individuals, but with individuals artificially defined.”

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VI : Presumptive Rights, § 20, p. 58.
Context: Law deals not with actual individuals, but with individuals artificially defined. We cannot say that law-makers are under an illusion to the effect that all men are equal. They do not even suppose them all alike in being reasonable, or in being well informed about the law, or in being morally sensitive about their own rights or the rights of others. Law-makers have probably never been blind about the conspicuous facts of human difference. Nevertheless, the law in every community — and not alone in modern communities — proposes to treat certain large groups of individuals as were alike "before the law."

“When law was held to come direct from the gods, it required a bold man and a prophet to propose a change in it. Perhaps it is still true that a law-maker ought to be something of a prophet. But if so, we are committed in western lands to the belief that prophetic capacity is widespread: the making of law goes on everywhere merrily and apace.”

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. I : What is Behind Us?, p. 1.
Context: When law was held to come direct from the gods, it required a bold man and a prophet to propose a change in it. Perhaps it is still true that a law-maker ought to be something of a prophet. But if so, we are committed in western lands to the belief that prophetic capacity is widespread: the making of law goes on everywhere merrily and apace.
In the midst of this vast labor it becomes clear to us that the more we relieve the gods of their burdens, the more we need to know what the gods know, the general principles on which law should be made. And if this knowledge were universal, and were applied in good faith, the law-makers themselves would in turn be relieved! In either case, then, we are bound to keep trying for a systematic grasp of those principles of law which we now possess in vague and fragmentary fashion.

“Principle II : The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions : they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.”

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VI : Presumptive Rights, § 24, p. 62.