Mechanical Jurisprudence

• Author: Howard E. Dean
• Pages: 1715

Page 1715

This pejorative epithet was introduced in 1908 by the American jurist ROSCOE POUND. It and similar rubrics?"the jurisprudence of conceptions," "slot machine, phonograph, T-square theories of law"?were widely used to caricature patterns of juristic thought and judicial action that deduced conclusions from unexamined, predetermined conceptions by purely mechanical logical processes, disregarded socioeconomic realities and practical consequences, and understated the degree of judicial law-making by attributing a machinelike automatism to the judicial process.

The "sociological jurisprudence" and "legal realism" of Justices OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, HARLAN FISKE STONE, and BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO were often hailed as correctives for mechanical jurisprudence because they viewed law and logic instrumentally as means to social ends, and they acknowledged judicial lawmaking.

A perennial juristic allurement, mechanical jurisprudence was exemplified by many Supreme Court "economic DUE PROCESS " and COMMERCE CLAUSE decisions between 1895 and 1937. In due process cases such as LOCHNER V. NEW YORK (1905) and ADKINS V. CHILDREN ' SHOSPITAL (1923), the Court invoked the laissez-faire doctrine, FREEDOM OF CONTRACT, which regarded workers and employers as bargaining equals, in holding state and federal legislation unconstitutional. In commerce clause cases such as UNITED STATES V. E. C. KNIGHT CO. (1895) and CARTER V. CARTER COAL CO. (1936), the Court used economically unrealistic distinctions between "commerce" and PRODUCTION, and "direct" and "indirect" EFFECTS ON COMMERCE in invalidating federal legislation. A classic expression of mechanical jurisprudence is the passage of Justice Owen Roberts's opinion in UNITED STATES V. BUTLER (1936) where he said the Court had only to compare the statute with the appropriate constitutional clause to see if they squared.

Such decisions led finally to President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT'S 1937 "Court reform" bill, designed, he said, "to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself." But the Court swiftly reversed and reformed itself, abandoning these mechanical...