ABSTRACT
The test of the scientific validity of a statement, a hypothesis, a “model,” lies in its predictive value, the extent to which it permits us to draw inferences about future states of affairs. In some areas of life, and possibly in certain situations in all realms, men seem systematically to arrange things so as to preclude predictability and leave events to chance. Solution of some of the very most important problems, including those of life and death, have been delegated to some chance mechanism, a controlled randomizer or merely a sloppy procedure calculated to give the unanticipated a break. In Alf Ross's version, probably the clearest and most sophisticated, the criterion of predictability is introduced with the explicit and passionately held goal of making legal theory scientific, i.e. a social science.
