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The severe disputations which rage in contempo rary jurisprudential thought revolve primarily around certain vexing philosophical and ethical questions which cast jurispru dential thought into various philosophical molds or schools. The viewpoints of contemporary juristic theories, however, are also definitely colored by ideological factors of a conservative or of a liberal character, although, in most instances, these fac tors have remained either unclarified or completely lost in the intricacies of philosophical disputation. A significant feature of jurisprudential thought today is the strong revival of inter est in natural-law theory. Sharp differences of opinion center particularly around the implications and consequences of natu ral-law jurisprudence for liberalism and conservatism as well as for civil rights and racial desegregation. Despite the fact that natural-law theories might embrace essentially different phenomena or that they might be used for contradictory pur poses, in all their forms they are marked by characteristics which make natural-law doctrine essentially and fundamentally conservative. Sociological jurisprudence and legal realism, on the other hand, may be regarded as the principal forms of ex pression of liberalism in the area of juristic thought. The liberal implications and consequences of these lines of thought for civil rights and desegregation cases are especially evident.

A Short Note on Methodology -- A Brief Biographical Sketch of Jerome Frank -- One — Foundations of american legal realism -- Holmes' Legal Positivism: The Forerunner of Legal Realism -- Roscoe Pound's Sociological Jurisprudence -- Institutional and Anthropological Approaches to Law -- Legal Realism and the Psychological Approach to Law -- Jerome Frank's Contribution -- Two — The crusade against the "myth" of legal certainty -- Why Do Men Crave Legal Certainty ? -- Legal Certainty: Frank's "Wasteland" of Modern Law -- The Road to Liberation -- The Consequences of Frank's Attack -- Three — Psychology as the new weapon of attack -- Frank's War of Liberation -- The Use of Psychological Materials: Jurisprudence as Therapy -- The Future of Psychological Tools in the Study of Law -- Four — The role of the judge in the judicial process -- What Courts Do In Fact -- The Anatomy of Court-House Government -- The Judicial "Hunch": The Contrapuntal Strains of Frank's Analysis of the Judicial Process -- The Upper-Court Myth and Its Effects: Rule-Skepticism and Fact-Skepticism -- Metaphysical Questions -- Five — Trial by jury and the problem of legal education -- Major Defects of the Jury System -- Suggested Reform of the Jury System -- The Conviction of Innocent Men -- Jury Verdicts and the Problem of Cadi-Justice -- The Relation of Legal Education to the Judicial Process -- How to Improve Legal Education -- Fusing Law and the Social Sciences: The Inter-Disciplinary Approach -- Six — Frank's contributions to the philosophy of American legal realism -- Legal "Axioms" and Frank's Suggested Remedies -- Criticism and Counter-Criticism of Jerome Frank's Philosophy of Law and of Legal Realism in General -- The Troublesome Problem of "Fact" and "Value" -- Some Selected Opinions of Judge Jerome Frank -- A Bibliography of the Writings of Jerome N. Frank -- General Works Used in This Study.

The Anglo-American lawyer is inclined to restrain his interest to the legal order; he becomes a specialist in the decisions rendered by the courts. The attorney, unfamiliar with present day methodology of the social sciences, is easily bewildered by the writings and judicial decisions of the sociological jurist. Part of this bewilderment may be at once eliminated by distinguishing two concepts of "law." The lawyer may conceive of the law as "that which is backed by the force of politically organized society." An inadequate amount of attention is directed toward the sources of law, its trends and its functions. Sociologists have a different meaning, and emphasize the functional phase of law. It is, they say, an institution of social control, an instrument in ordering human conduct. For its survival and betterment society uses law to control the individual.

Mr. Justice Frankfurter recently said that the number of cases coming before the Supreme Court of the United States which were not based on statutes was "reduced almost to zero." This growth of statutory as against pure case law is, of course, not confined to the United States. It inevitably accompanies the social welfare state and the increase in government which every modern industrial society has experienced and which two world wars, with their need for the total mobilization of resources, have further stimulated. Apart from these sociological factors which affect states with the most different legal systems, it is still customary to contrast the "code-minded" continental systems with the "case-minded" tradition of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Insofar as it is meant to indicate a parallel contrast in the judicial approach to statutes, this is in many ways a false antithesis. It is quite true that the history of the common law systems has encouraged an empirical and inductive approach to legal problems, a disinclination to think in terms of abstract rights and duties rather than of concrete remedies, a judicial distrust of parliamentary encroachments upon the sphere of the "lawyer's law." As will be shown, this attitude still powerfully influences the judicial approach to statutes in contemporary England. Insofar as American'law has taken over the basic principles and approach of the common law, this may well be true of the United States too; but the fundamental difference is that the United States, like other countries inside and outside the common law system, likes a written constitution.