On Law and Justice

Reprint of the 1959 edition. Originally published: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. xi, 383 pp. In this influential and oft-cited study Ross discounted the theories of natural law, positivism and legal realism. In their stead, he proposed the abandonment of "ought-propositions" for the "is-propositions" employed by other empirical sciences, thereby envisioning lawyers that serve merely as "rational technologists." Less bound by tradition, and traditional notions of justice, jurisprudence then becomes "not only a beautiful mental activity per se, but also an instrument which may benefit any lawyer who wants to understand what he is doing and why" (Preface).