The scarcity of resources and time limit the scope of ideas and the framework of deliberations in all human activities. Thus time and resources equally place limits upon any attempt to theorise and conceptualise, whether in science or in teaching. This limitation bears equally upon the choices of method and substance. Thus in the study of international law today the question is posed, what are the priorities with regard to basic questions and to their systematic presentation on the one hand, and then how to proceed (of necessity selectively) for the purposes of teaching on the other?
Contemporary legal education consists in what has been called “modern, rational, legal university education”. As a result of the rational-systematic transfer of legal ideas and techniques, the legal mind so formed can release itself from the concern with everyday needs of those who are the “consumers” of law, which Max Weber has described as follows:
“The rational-systematic pattern of legal thought may induce the legal mind to dissociate itself largely from the everyday needs of those who are most affected by the law, and so does a lack of its concrete substantiation. The power of the unleashed dictates of pure logic in legal theory and a legal practice dominated by it can to a large extent eliminate considerations of practical needs as the driving force for the formation of law.”