Roscoe Pound

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Roscoe Pound (1916)

Roscoe Pound (born October 27, 1870 in Lincoln , Nebraska , † July 1, 1964 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American botanist , lawyer and university professor who combined law and jurisprudence with sociological approaches and thereby became a pioneer of legal sociology , but also the philosophy of law was.

Life

The son of Stephen Bosworth Pound, a member of the Nebraska State Senate , studied botany after school at the University of Nebraska , where he first earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA Botany) in 1888 and then a Master of Arts (MA Botany) in 1889 . A subsequent study of law at Harvard University he finished in 1890. In 1890, immediately after graduating, he took over a professorship for law at the University of Nebraska and taught there until 1903. During this time he acquired a Philosophiae Doctor (Ph .D. Botany), but was an appeal judge at the Supreme Court of Nebraska between 1901 and 1903. He quickly became an expert in the field of botany and was largely responsible for botanical research in Nebraska and wrote the textbook Phytogeography of Nebraska (1898) on this topic together with FE Clements .

In 1907 he took over a professorship at Northwestern University , moved to the University of Chicago in 1909 , before teaching as professor of law at Harvard Law School between 1910 and 1937 . In 1911 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1940 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1940 he also became a corresponding member of the British Academy . Most recently he was dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936 .

Pound was a gifted, influential university professor who emphasized the importance of social interests in connection with the legal system and who had far-reaching effects through his theories. In 1922, Roscoe undertook an intensive study of criminal reporting during January 1919 in Cleveland, Ohio with the future Supreme Court Justice of the United States, Felix Frankfurter . They found that the press coverage of criminal cases had increased almost sevenfold from the first half of the month to the second half of the month, although the number of actually reported criminal cases only grew from 345 to 363. They concluded that while the sharp rise in Cleveland crime depicted was largely fabricated by the press, that fiction had a real impact on the work of law enforcement. Believing that the city was facing an acute "epidemic" of crime, the population called for a tougher crackdown and increased police force. Politicians in the city administration complied with the demands for reasons of election tactics. The result was often tougher penalties for the same acts, which were much more easily punished before the panic. During his last years of apprenticeship, he promoted the German lawyer Max Rheinstein .

The Pound Civil Justice Institute was founded in his honor in 1956.

Freemasonry

Pound had been a member of the Freemasons Association since 1901 . He held various high offices there. a. the office of lodge master at Lancaster Lodge No. 54 in Lincoln (Nebraska) and was also the grandmaster of various grand lodges (including the Grand Lodge of Nebraska and the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts ). He also wrote numerous monographs on Freemasonry:

  • Masonic Jurisprudence (1919)
  • Masonic Landmarks, The Data of Masonic Jurisprudence (48 pp.)
  • Masonic Lawmaking (48 pp.)
  • Masonic Common Law (56 pp.)
  • Lectures On The Philosophy of Freemasonry (1915)
  • Lectures on masonic jurisprudence (1920)

Publications

Through his numerous publications, Pound made a decisive contribution to combining jurisprudence and jurisprudence with sociological approaches and thus became an early pioneer in the field of legal sociology. His most famous works include:

  • Phytogeography of Nebraska (1898)
  • Readings on the History and System of the Common Law (1904)
  • Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence (1914)
  • The Spirit of the Common Law (1921)
  • Law and Morals (1924)
  • Criminal Justice in America (1930)
  • The formative Era of American Law (1938)
  • Justice According to Law (1951)
  • Constitutional Guarantees of Liberty (1957)
  • Jurisprudence (1959, 5 volumes)

Background literature

  • David Wigdor: Roscoe Pound, Philosopher of Law , 1974
  • Chambers Biographical Dictionary, ISBN 0-550-10051-2 , 2002, p. 1226

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Roscoe Pound. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 20, 2018 .
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 20, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Klaus Bruhn Jensen: A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies . Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0-415-22588-4 , pp. 45-46 .
  4. ^ Roscoe Pound, Felix Frankfurter: Criminal Justice in Cleveland . The Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, OH 1922, pp. 546 .
  5. ^ Homepage of the Pound Civil Justice Institute
  6. ↑ Famous Freemasons Roscoe Pound , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (Retrieved April 25, 2012)
personal data
SURNAME Pound, Roscoe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist, lawyer, and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Lincoln , Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1964
Place of death Cambridge , Massachusetts