ABSTRACT
Karl Llewellyn was accurately described by his biographer as 'the only American ever to have been awarded the Iron Cross; the only American lawyer known to have successfully collaborated with an anthropologist on a major work. Llewellyn was explicit in his conviction that case law reasoning was fully appropriate to constitutional decision-making; rules must account for the past as well as guide the future. Llewellyn begins by conjuring up a picture of the law as it existed at the time as a closed system "which viewed the common law as complete and perfect". Llewellyn alludes to the arbitration clause in German contracts, then uncommon in America. In defending the creativity of case law, Llewellyn noted that critical cases usually arose at random: "It is rare for there to be an uninterrupted succession of fact situations favoring only one of the interest groups affected by a legal rule or group of rules".
