Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3071

Pound Correspondence – to, by and about Roscoe Pound, Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

1954-1960

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2374

Letter from Heath to Dean Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

June 28, 1954

 

Dear Sir:

 

For many years I have admired and enjoyed your various writings (much wider in scope than those of other jurists) and your philosophic views with respect to the judicial process and public administration. Your reviews of past thinkers in these lines, their contrasting modes of thought, bespeak an enormous background of scholarship and keen discrimination.

 

      Lately reviewing quite a number of your writings I have been much impressed by your review of legal theory from Aristotle and Socrates on down as involving two contrasting views of authentic law: one, that a people should be ruled by a body of abstract precepts more or less idealized to which all legal enactments and decisions should conform. The other, that the authentic law consists in whatever political power decrees or enacts as such.

      I think you show a commendable bias in favor of the former, but I cannot help wondering if you have ever entertained a third alternative differing from and transcending both of these. It is to be observed that both of these historical theories rest on a single pre­sumption — namely, that, entirely apart from those persons who are given to violent or otherwise anti-social behavior, it is the normal function of the public authority to prevent certain kinds of behavior which it is normal for civilized men to engage in and to coerce the law-abiding population generally into conformities to which they will not otherwise submit.

      It would seem that if there is a higher alternative than coercion; if there is a means of conducting the public and community affairs without resort to coercion, violence, and ultimately war, such alternative should be carefully looked into.

      A key to this seems to be given in your distinction between the dominium and the imperium; between property right and the political prerogative; the right of ownership resting on title and consent and exercised by contract, and the right of expropriation springing from discovery, conquest, or surrender, and exercised by force. With your profound scholarship you are of course aware that the imperium historically has in most cases been preceded by a proprietary administration of community services and needs on the continent of Europe and especially in England for some five centuries before the Conquest. This proprietary administration has in most cases been broken down by rivalries between proprietors of communities necessitating taxation to maintain their petty wars. Corruption of this proprietary authority seems to have been delayed in England by reason of re­moteness from continental practices derived from the   spirit of Rome and the proprietary system not completely broken down until the Conquest in 1066.

      To me it is significant that much of the English common law was socially evolved between the fifth century and the tenth, during which time proprietary communities were the rule and civilization advanced to the Alfredian Renaissance shortly before the Conquest. The typical community, however crudely administered, was owned by a land lord and occupied by free men — men who were free because they were related to the public authority by con­tract instead of by compulsion, the rent they paid being at least approximately the equivalent of the protection and other community services they as occupants severally received.

      May it not be possible in the foreseeable future that the highly specialized owners of metropolitan communities will merge their separate holdings by vesting in a single corporation in exchange for shares of stock according to the appraised value of their several and respective contributions?

      Such a community corporation would then be in busi­ness for the protection of its total properties and of their rent-paying inhabitants and thereby in position to produce and distribute services and amenities of every kind for the benefit of the population and for the enhancement of rent thereby accruing voluntarily to the public authority.

      A public authority of this kind, having its own legitimate revenue, would be under no need to seize pro­perty or coerce its customers and would have every legitimate profit motivation for protecting them from undue political depredation and for themselves providing such public services as would be necessary and beneficial to their rent-paying inhabitants.

      This is the alternative, as I see it, to the present anomalous practice of coercing the community inhabitants in order to protect and otherwise serve them.

      I am sending on a separate sheet a suggested pros­pectus under which such a community-owning corporation might be established.

      I should be most happy to have you advise me what you think of the possibility of a new advance in social evolution through the development of proprietary and contractual in lieu of political and coercive community administration. It may seem an unlikely avenue of investigation but it should be remembered that great advances after long delays often spring from the most unexpected sources.

      Congratulating you on the notable contributions you have made in the juridical and related fields and with profound respect I am,

                            Sincerely yours,

SH:sm                                 Spencer Heath

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath at Elkridge from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

June 28, 1954

 

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

The subject about which you write me, and the enclosed notes on the organiza­tion of real estate raise questions which I certainly am not prepared to write about offhand. I can see that here is something deserving careful thought and study which I cannot give to it at present. I have undertaken all that I can possibly do between now and September. It is quite impossible to take on an ad­ditional matter of such magnitude.

Yours very truly,

 

/s/ Roscoe Pound

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1555

Letter to Dr. Roscoe Pound,

6 Beacon Street, Boston 8, Massachusetts

August 15, 1955

 

Dear Sir:

      Some time ago, you were kind enough to let me have your not unfavorable reaction to my suggestion that in a community in which the various owners of the basic realty were so organized as to conduct the community affairs themselves, without resort to any political methods, it might be possible and indeed profitable for such an authority to administer the common services and properties solely in the interest of the inhabitants, thereby creating a natural public revenue in the form of rent in recompense of their proprietary administration.

      From this point of view, the proprietors holding undivided interests in the whole community instead of separate and unorganized holdings, it seems that com­munity services could be created and distributed precisely as any corporate organization serves its clientele — its purchasing public — through serving them instead of by taxing and otherwise coercing them, the revenue and profit received being the market value of the services performed.

      Thinking you might find it congenial to explore further the possibility suggested, I am sending you three little booklets which you may find interesting in an otherwise idle hour. Also, I enclose a short criticism of the contrary view as set out most persuasively upon religious and moralistic grounds by the Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn a good many years ago.

      Please let me compliment you upon your valuable introduction to Eugene C. Gerhart’s excellent volume, American Liberty & Natural Law, recently at hand.

      Again with profound respect, I am,

Sincerely yours,

SH/m

Enc:  Triple booklets on Property in Land

       “The Trojan Horse of ‘Land Reform’”

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2417

Letter from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Mass.

7 September 1955

Dear Mr. Heath:

I am indeed obliged by your sending me the three booklets, The Trojan Horse of land Reform, Private Property in Land Explained, and Real Estate, How to Raise and Restore its Income and Value. They came during my absence and I have only just been able to look at them. I am sure I shall read them with interest and profit.

    Yours very truly,

    /s/ Roscoe Pound

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2552

Letter from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Mass.

April 22, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath,

I am sorry that my attention had not been drawn to the article “Sky Hooks” by Dr. Ohmann. I will get hold of it at the first opportunity and read it carefully.

Yours very truly,

/s/ Roscoe Pound

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2633

Letter from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University,

Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

June 19, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

Many thanks for the copy of your paper “The Practice of Christian Freedom” which I am very glad indeed to have.

Very truly yours,

/s/ Roscoe Pound

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Carbon of letter from Heath to Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

August 22, 1957

 

Dear Dr. Pound:

 

Remembering your great influence in the development of juridical science in the direc­tion of human freedom, I take great pleasure in presenting to you an inscribed copy of my recently published CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR, which you will see from the enclosed quotations is being somewhat favorably received. I trust you will enjoy reading it and that you will be stimulated — perhaps also Inspired — by some of its unusual points of view.

 

With my best compliments and great respect, I remain

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Spencer Heath

SH/m

CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR

     under separate cover

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath at Elkridge from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

August 26, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

     I appreciate very much your sending me the inscribed copy of the recently published “Citadel, Market and Altar.” It has not come yet but I shall look forward to reading it the more especially as the subject matter which is indicated is one in which I have a deep and abiding interest.

                          Yours very truly,

 

                          /s/ Roscoe Pound

 

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath at Elkridge from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

September 6, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

I have just received the book “Citadel, Market and Altar – Emerging Society” which you were good enough to send me. I have been able to look it over only enough to make it clear that here is a book of the first importance which I must read carefully and thoroughly. At the moment I am wrestling with arrears of work which must have the right of way, but I am looking forward to a thorough ac­quaintance with an outstanding contribution to a crucial problem of our time.

Yours very truly,

/s/ Roscoe Pound

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath, 1502 Montgomery Road, Elkridge 27, Maryland,

from Roscoe Pound, Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Mass.

October 21, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

A more careful reading of your book “Citadel, Market and Altar — Emerging Society” confirms the opinion which I formed on first looking it over. Indeed it is an outstanding contribution to a crucial problem of our times.

 

Very truly yours,

/s/ Roscoe Pound

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1687

Carbon of a letter to Dr. Felix Morley,

Gibson Island, Maryland

1959

 

 

 

Dear Dr. Morley:

I have just finished reading your article on “Individuality and the General Will” and want to tell you how much I admire its clear discrimination. It throws much light on the sources of our current academic confusions. I like your substantial identification of social contract with the common law, as understood by Dr. Pound, and as the counterpart of natural law in the scientific sense. Also your attribution of authoritarian tyranny to every kind of attempt to enforce some hypothetical general will. And your paper so well illuminates the middle ground, sought by the American Founders, between its coercive enforcement by a central authority or by an equally coercive authority democratically diffused.

Experience does not show that this middle ground can be maintained. Dr. Judith N. Shklar’s scholarly critique of all political thinking (After Utopia; The Decline of Political Faith, Princeton, 1958) concludes on a note of despair and calls for a new and “genuinely radical political philosophy.” If you have not done so, I am sure you will enjoy reading it.

I hope the world-political situation has not been discouraging to you, in view of the long term movements in history which constitute the general trend.

Wishing you many happy new years,

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter from Heath at Elkridge to Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

May 13, 1960

 

Dear Dr. Pound:

 

      I feel greatly indebted to you for your several kind communications during the last few years. Your writings have often reinforced my admiration for the Common Law as a vital growth still operating among us, as against the mass of legislative enactments with which the modern world is so nearly overwhelmed.

     

      Through my friend, Felix Morley, and his associates at the American Enterprise Association, I have most recently had opportunity of admiring your very searching review of labor union privileges as springing historically from the prerogatives of the king.

 

      In the early part of June, I expect to be in and near Cambridge for a week or more. I would greatly appreciate and enjoy a bit of your acquaintance at first hand, either as your luncheon or supper host or during some part of an afternoon. If this should be agreeable and convenient to you, I shall be happy indeed.

 

Sincerely yours,

Spencer Heath

SH/m

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath at Elkridge from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

May 24, 1960

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

I should be very glad indeed to see you in Cambridge whenever it is convenient to you. So far as I know I shall be quite free except for an engagement to speak in New York on June 2.

I can be found in my office on the mezzanine floor in Langdell Hall from 8 o’clock in the morning until 1 p.m., and from 2 p.m. until 5, and shall always be glad to see you.

Yours very truly,

/s/ Roscoe Pound

 

/Further contact information in pencil by Heath/

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3071

Letter from Heath to Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

June 16, 1960

Dear Dr. Pound:

I am writing to express to you my very great pleasure at having had such a fine visit with you about a week ago. It was delightful to have this contact with your personality as it has been with your very wonderful publications over a long period of time. I also wish to thank you again for your very kind appreciation of my own contribution towards an understanding of our Western system and the enormous potentialities which it holds.

      My grandson, Spencer Heath MacCallum, wishes also to express his appreciation of your very kind hospitality of mind and heart. Both of us are delighted at having received your permission to include your name along with that of Dr. Hocking on the Board of Trustees of the Science of Society Foundation.

      With many good wishes for your long continued good health and serenity.

Sincerely

Spencer Heath

SH/m

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3071

Letter from Heath at Elkridge to Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

August 24, 1960

 

Dear Dr. Pound:

 

Pursuant to your kind consent to me and my grandson on the occasion of our delightful visit with you some two months ago, you were elected as member of the Board of Trustees of The Science of Society foundation at a meeting called especially for that purpose on August 18^th. We feel highly complimented by your willingness to serve (without any obligation further than perhaps some advisory participation). It is indeed an honor to have your association and your sympathy with the general purposes of our organization.

 

Cordially yours,

 

 

Enclosed: Statement of Purposes

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter to Heath at Elkridge from Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

29 August 1960

 

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

I am in entire sympathy with the general purposes of your organization, and wish it all success in its undertakings. But as I told you when you called at my office, I have more irons in the fire than I can expect to keep reasonably warm, and cannot contribute anything more to your Foundation, other than my best wishes.

 

Yours very truly,

 

/s/ Roscoe Pound

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2574

Letter from Heath at Elkridge to Roscoe Pound,

Law School of Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

September 26, 1960

 

Dear Dr. Pound:

 

The kindness of your letter of August 29^th was appreciated. Please be assured that, as originally understood between us (at supper the night before), your election to the Board of Trustees of The Science of Society Foundation, Inc. at its meeting on August twentieth, 1960, does not impose any obligations or responsibilities more than your kindly expressed sympathy with its purposes and best wishes for its affairs.

 

      Cordially and with highest compliments,

 

sh/m                         Spencer Heath

 

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