Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless
Context: The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.
“The only thing that can set aside a law as wrong is a better law, or an idea of a better law. And the only thing that an give a law the quality of better or worse is the concrete result which it promotes or fails to promote.”
Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 35, p. 76.
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William Ernest Hocking 31
American philosopher 1873–1966Related quotes
“The concept of law can be defined only as the reality tending toward the idea of law.”
Rechtsphilosophie (1932)
Harijan (27 October 1946) p. 369
1940s
Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless
Context: The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.
Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.7 New Star
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties