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Introduction
rights may sometimes be more effectively manifested than by procedural methods.[1]
Albert Kocourek
Northwestern University.
- ↑ Even commercial litigation is seeking an escape from the delays and difficulties of justice. It must be clear, therefore, that the procedural situation offers no advantages to purely ideal reactions against what the author calls subjective injustice. But there is a deeper reason which impels self-assertion to seek either the path of “club-law,” or, more likely, silence. When Jhering composed this address (1872) he could hardly have foreseen the centralization of trade, industry, credit, and population which has within the last decades revolutionized the earth. In ancient society individual rights were submerged in the activities of the group. Personality has never been quite as well protected by the law as the claims of property; but when Jhering wrote, rights of individual persons had already reached their highest point in an evolution of many centuries. If anything can be predicted safely of the future one may, perhaps, say that the individual is again rapidly on the way to the loss of his identity. The modern world with its systems, its efficiencies, and its pragmatisms (and we say it with regret) is crushing down the picturesque freedom and initiative of the individual. It will require another era to restore him to the position to which Jhering would have exalted him.
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