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Sound Ideas and Absurd Consequences: Reflections of a Legal Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

R. C. Van Caenegem
R. C. Van Caenegem*
Affiliation:
Universiteitstraat 4, B 9000 Gent, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

During the 60 years that I have been writing – and speculating – on public law (my first book on medieval criminal law came out in 1954), I have been repeatedly struck by a particular phenomenon to which I would now like to draw attention: that sound ideas and useful innovations eventually – when relentlessly taken to their extreme consequences and pushed along the abstract lines of their inner logic – lead to absurd or even nefarious results, defeating the original intention.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 93 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2011

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References

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