— Also termed fiction of law; fictio juris. [Cases: Trusts 91. C.J.S. Trover and Conversion §§ 10, 12, 174, 195.]
“I … employ the expression ‘Legal Fiction’ to signify any assumption which conceals, or affects to conceal, the fact that a rule of law has undergone alteration, its letter remaining unchanged, its operation being modified…. It is not difficult to understand why fictions in all their forms are particularly congenial to the infancy of society. They satisfy the desire for improvement, which is not quite wanting, at the same time that they do not offend the superstitious disrelish for change which is always present.” Henry S. Maine, Ancient Law 21–22 (17th ed. 1901).
“Legal fiction is the mask that progress must wear to pass the faithful but blear-eyed watchers of our ancient legal treasures. But though legal fictions are useful in thus mitigating or absorbing the shock of innovation, they work havoc in the form of intellectual confusion.” Morris R. Cohen, Law and the Social Order 126 (1933).
