Roscoe Pound

Life and ideas

Roscoe Pound grew up in Nebraska, trained as a botanist as well as a lawyer, and was dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. In 1906 a speech on the causes of popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice angered the American Bar Association and made his name. He argued that the law should be studied by how it works, not only by what its books say, and that a gap often opens between the 'law in books' and the 'law in action'. He saw law as a kind of social engineering, balancing individual, public and social interests with as little friction as possible. Though he later became more conservative and criticised the realists, he is the main figure of American sociological jurisprudence.