The Lasswell-McDougal Enterprise: Toward a World Public Order of Human Dignity
![handle is hein.journals/vajint14 and id is 545 raw text is: The Lasswell-McDougal Enterprise: Toward a
World Public Order of Human Dignity*
A generation has now passed since Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S.
McDougal published their first collaborative outline of a policy-oriented
approach to the study of law, a 1943 article entitled Legal Education and
Public Policy: Professional Training in the Public Interest.' At numerous
points in that famous proposal for reform of the law school curriculum,
Lasswell and McDougal forecast the intellectual enterprise they were
shortly to undertake:
Despite all the talk of teleological jurisprudence and of the ne-
cessity of evaluating legal structures, doctrines, and procedures
in terms of basic policy, there is little conscious, systematic effort
to relate them clearly and consistently to the major problems of
a society struggling to achieve democratic values.-
In the thirty years since the publication of that article, Lasswell,
McDougal, and their numerous collaborators and students have produced
an enormous and distinctive body of work in the fields of policy-making,
jurisprudence, and international law.3 Characteristic of this literature is a
set of intellectual procedures and conceptual frameworks which provide an
integrated, contextual approach to the evaluation of legal and political
problems.' This policy-oriented or configurative approach has been
* This Note is taken from a broader study now in progress. For valuable comments and
critiques of earlier drafts the author wishes to thank Professor Myres S. McDougal of Yale
Law School and Professors Richard B. Lillich, Thomas F. Bergin, and Calvin Woodard of the
University of Virginia School of Law. Jay Gladis was particularly helpful with editorial
suggestions.
1. Lasswell & McDougal, Legal Education and Public Policy: Professional Training in the
Public Interest, 52 YALE L.J. 203 (1943), in M. McDOUGAL & AssOCITEs, STUDias In WORLD
PUBLIC ORDER 42 (1960) [hereinafter cited as STDIES IN WORLD P'LUC ODERa]. For a recent
symposium on the article, see 54 VA. L. REv. 585 et seq. (1968).
2. Lasswell & McDougal, STUDIES IN WORL PUBLIC ORDER, supra note 1, at 44.
3. A relatively complete bibliography of Lasswell's published works was assembled by
Jerry Gaston for PoLTIcs, PERSONALITY, AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE TwEsTurH Ce.vtmy:
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF HAROLD D. LAsswELL at 407-43 (A. Rogow ed. 1969) [hereinafter cited as
ESSAYS FOR LASSWELL]. A less thorough job was done for McDougal's works in 1 DEvR J.
INT'L L. & POL. 2 (1971).
4. Various terms have been used to describe the collective work of Lasswell, McDougal,
and their associates, including New Haven Approach, Yale School, and McDougal-
Lasswell system. The originators themselves have used the adjectives configurative,
policy-oriented, value-oriented, policy science, and problem-solving somewhat in-
terchangeably over the years to describe their work, and that practice is to some extent
followed herein. The term approach is used to refer to their theory about law and its
accompanying set of conceptual tools. The extended application of that approach to particu-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/vajint14&div=30&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Lasswell-McDougal Enterprise: Toward a World Public Order of Human Dignity
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