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Show LAW NOT KEEPING UP TO TIMES By DEAN YOUNG B. SMITH. CoIumJyia Law Sctiool. TIIE law and legal profession in this country suffer too much from intellectual inbreeding and lack the proper and dynamic touch with life and society. By "intellectual inbreeding" I mean the ' isolation of the law or rather its lack of proper contact with other ' ephcres of research nnd study and its failure to keep abreast with social End economic changes. ; ' The many and important changes which are taking place in the economic and social structure, with the concomitant shifting in philo-' r Sophie thought are creating new problems of law. Their solution calls for . V an understanding and technique which contemporary legal education docs not ftfTord. Legal concepts born of a passing order nje losing their ' vr ; .7 utility and devices for law making and law administration designed to j ifnnction in a simpler society are breaking down under the complexities of I A -' modern life, and this is so evidenced by the popular demand for remedial ' legislation, the increasing nonobservance or disregard of law and the growing tendency to invoke nonlegal agencies in the regulation of business busi-ness and the adjustment of disputes. . ,v The habit of lawyers in looking to reported opinions for the answer to legal questions has tended to deprive the law of the benefit of new . ideas in testing the validity of rules of the law. Even when courts are ' , inclined to formulate new policies, their decisions too often rest on little more than the limited experience of the particular judges who make the pronouncements. Seldom do the courts utilize the knowledge of the economist, econ-omist, the historian, the psychologist, or the. philosopher in determining social policy, The profession has developed no technique by which such knowledge is made available. As a result, legal standards arc often incon- . sistent with actual experience. |