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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Inarticulate Premiss |
Author: | Seidman, Robert B. |
Year: | 1965 |
Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
Volume: | 3 |
Period: | December |
Pages: | 567-587 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | French-speaking Africa |
Subjects: | bibliographies (form) Law, Human Rights and Violence |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/159178 |
Abstract: | This article purports to give the opinions of three judges of the highest court if appeal in Newstate, Africa. The title is taken from a phrase of O.W. Holmes, an American writer on jurisprudence, who held that the result of a case depended upon 'the inarticulate major premiss' of the judge (or the judgement), at least in matters of first impression - i.e. cases in which the judges must determine for the first time what is the operative rule ('norm') of law. He urged this proposition in sharp opposition to the popular notion that a judge merely applied to the ascertained facts clear rules of law, which he found in earlier cases or in statutes. The case described here is entitled: In The Supreme Court of Newstate: December 1965; The Republic Vs. Kwame s/o Nighihili. The facts of this case invented; but there are many similar cases which have arisen in the courts of anglophonic Africa. This novel case raises the question of the approach to law and to legal problems which will best serve the new country after its independence from the British Crown. Footnotes. |