It is rather significant that the "Deutsche Juristenzeitung", in its special edition on the occasion of the jubilee of the Leipzig University, deemed it worth while to devote in that number 135 not less than three articles to the modern reform movement. This is not the place to discuss these articles in detail, but I should like to quote the appreciative words Mitteis wrote regarding the new school:

"Some 'positive' jurists may be surprised if for the present I say merely that I have found many of these charges excessive and unfair. Out-and-out 'positivists' may have expected a radical anathema against such writings. But I cannot, indeed, persuade myself to take such a part. I believe it is our duty to take into most conscientious consideration criticisms which in part at least come from very well instructed and keenly observant members of our profession, for possibly we may learn therefrom where we are at fault. I also believe that there are many things to be corrected." And further on he says: "What we need is less 'jus' and more real jurists."

Recently, Professor Heck of Tubingen has also taken part in the controversy regarding the sociological method.136 He declares the cardinal error of the deductive method to be that rules are deduced from concepts which themselves have been formed to contain those rules. This he calls the method of inversion. I may-quote a few sentences of Heck as strong endorsements of my views:

133 RG Str 18, p. 116.

134 Sec. 26 supra.

135 DJZnos. 16, 17 (1909).

136 DJZ no. 24 (Nov. 1909).

"Technical deductive jurisprudence covers up the connection of the law and the interests of real life. The law has no purpose except to serve such interests, to delimit and balance the interests of men. The principal business of legal science is to investigate the relations between legal rules and the condition of the various interests. No rule of law has been understood and explained until the interests it represents have been understood and explained. The method of inversion fails to do this. If we consider the rule to be the logical consequence of a conception containing a command, we cannot at the same time represent it as resulting from a process of balancing the needs of the parties. . . . The attacks upon German legal science are in many respects unfair and excessive, but to a great extent also they are unfortunately justified. The decisions which Fuchs deprecates are, in a considerable measure, as a matter of fact erroneous, and they cannot be explained as individual slips but must be explained as consequences of a faulty method. The greatest guilt is to be laid at the door of the inversive method. The remedy is to be sought principally in abandoning completely and as a matter of principle the method of inversion in all its forms and with all its consequences."