Chapter III - The Postulate of Legal Determinacy

Summary

In the last few years, it has often been pointed out that the provisions of a statute usually do not bring anything new in terms of content. The statute leans against existing orders of life and habits of intercourse; it makes use of the moral [45] opinions of the time and of the people, of cultural ideas. In brief, the legislative authority has, as far as concerns the content of its activity, more of an ordering and collecting than a productive character. There is a ‘rapport, que les loix ont avec les principes qui forment l’esprit général, les moeurs et les manières d’une nation’ [‘The laws stand in relation to the principles that form the general spirit, the habits and the manners of a nation’].