From natural law to legal realism
Veblen’s thought matured in a broader intellectual ferment that predisposed him to the same style of social thought that has motivated law and economics ever since. Had he entered university 30 years earlier, Veblen would no doubt have imbibed a social philosophy grounded in natural law; in other words, he would have been taught to approach the concepts of philosophy, law and political economy as emanations of the coherent logic of the universe, distinct from, or even contradistinct to, worldly interests.
In the event, though, his philosophical training included a healthy dose of pragmatism, that novel and distinctively American doctrine which stood four-square against all that natural law represented. Whereas traditional jurisprudence had sought to analyse legal principles by reference to their function in a metaphysical whole, the pragmatist spirit demanded that they be understood as none other than an instrument of man’s purposes. It was this impulse which led Veblen to argue for ‘the adaptation of all human institutions by a process of selective elimination of the economically unfit’ (Veblen, 1897, p. 462). Such an assertion would have been shocking not long before Veblen was writing; not long after, it was commonplace. In large part, it is to Veblen, his teachers and his students that the ascendancy of legal realism is ultimately due.
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