The law must keep its promises? That doesn’t sound particularly Utilitarian
Granting a bit of poetic license and interpretive wiggle-room to Holmes: if we are *rule* utilitarians and the (then-current) laws are the utility-maximizing rules and the legal system is tasking with enforcing those rules, enforcing them—keeping the promise—is the rule-utilitarian’ly morally required thing to do.
I think that’s a utilitarian interpretation that neither does excessive violence to Holmes’ quote nor the category or concept of utilitarianism.
Granting a bit of poetic license and interpretive wiggle-room to Holmes: if we are *rule* utilitarians and the (then-current) laws are the utility-maximizing rules and the legal system is tasking with enforcing those rules, enforcing them—keeping the promise—is the rule-utilitarian’ly morally required thing to do.
I think that’s a utilitarian interpretation that neither does excessive violence to Holmes’ quote nor the category or concept of utilitarianism.