A related point is that law is forward-looking. This point is implicit in an instrumental concept of law-which is the pragmatic concept of law, law as the servant of human needs, and is in sharp contrast to Aristotle's influential theory of corrective justice. That theory is quintessentially backward-looking. The function of law as corrective justice is to restore a preexisting equilibrium of rights, while in Cardozo's account "[n]ot the origin, but the goal, is the main thing. There can be no wisdom in the choice of a path unless we know where it will lead .... The rule that functions well produces a title deed to recognition .... [T]he final principle of selection for judges ... is one of fitness to an end." … The "title deed" sentence is particularly noteworthy; it is a rebuke to formalist theories that require that for a law to be valid it must be "pedigreed" by being shown to derive from some authoritative source.

XREF: Contrasts Cardozo's forward-looking pragmatism with Aristotle's backward-looking corrective justice and formalist 'pedigree' theories of validity.

Richard A. Posner, Richard A. Posner - What Ha…, loc. 38