A Study Of Case Justice In American Legal Realism

In judicial process, whether the general justice or the case justice should be realized has always been a controversial issue. The American Legal Realism that was born in the 1920’s-1930’s had transferred the legal research from theory to practice and legislation to judiciary, emphasizing the uncertainty and doubting the rules in area of the law. It claimed that rules were not the core part in the law and they did not determine the judgment, which emphasized the case justice in the judiciary. The reasons for that American Legal Realism values the case justice are as follows. Firstly, many unreasonable and unfair judgments had been brought about by Legal Formalism. Secondly, the Common Law tradition of America put more attention on substantial justice, which was different from that of UK. Thirdly, American Legal Realism suspected the rules and facts, who thought that the general justice in rules was very difficult to be obtained. According to the theory of case justice, the character of justice was not formal justice or abstract justice but essential justice or concrete justice. The theory of case justice focused on not rules but judges, focused on special facts in cases and emphasized the application of "The Grand Style" in the process of realizing case justice.Case Justice Theory not only expands the domain of Jurisprudence in theory, but also makes the result of judicial decision more reasonable, which has a significant impact on thoughts of other schools. However, the Case Justice Theory excessively emphasizes the judicature and neglects the certainty of rules; as a result, it appears the phenomenon of "eliminating autocracy of lawmaking but coming to the autocracy of judging", which means that the judicial discretion has not been regulated rationally. Therefore, not only should we see the value of the theory of case justice, we must also pay due attention to its defects.