Page:Hohfeld System of Fundamental Legal Concepts.djvu/1

 THE HOHFELD SYSTEM OF FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL CONCEPTS By Albert Kocourek

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, late professor of law in Yale University, was widely known among his professional colleagues as a successful teacher and a keen analyst of legal problems. Such attributes in fair measure are a necessary part of the equipment of those who conduct the rigorous schedule of the present-day law school. But Professor Hohfeld achieved fame in a field other than that of teaching. He lived to realize the unique distinction of seeing his system of jural concepts accepted as a body of official classroom doctrine at the institution of learning, where later a wretched fate struck him down in the midst of his constructive proposals and while he was still in the flower of his mental vigor. Had he lived yet a while, he would have seen his jural analysis carried to, and established at, another famous seat of legal scholarship by a generous and competent associate. He would have seen an important revision of a well-known text-book based upon it. He would have found a recent case-book making tacit acknowledgment of the value of his system. Likewise, he would have been gratified, as well he might, to discover his analysis accepted by various law teachers, as shown by miscellaneous writings in American law reviews of recent months. Lastly, had he lived, he would have experienced the satisfaction of finding an interest in his ideas unequalled perhaps by any single contribution to legal science in America within the last twenty years.

In venturing to discuss the Hohfeld System, and at various points to urge serious objections to it, the present writer is tardily responding to a wish which Professor Hohfeld himself, about a year before his death, did him the honor to express, that he make a formal statement of his views. The writer need not say that these comments, the substance of which he had already, though crudely and ineffectually, attempted to convey to Professor Hohfeld, go with a sense of regret that they cannot in their present form meet