Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

predictive theory of law

The view that the law is nothing more than a set of predictions about what the courts will decide in given circumstances. ( This theory is embodied in Holmes's famous pronouncement, "The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 460-61 (1897). - Also termed prediction theory. Cf. BAD-MAN THEORY.