Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:23:44.800Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

American Legal Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

Given statements like these about current developments in intellectualizing about law in America it is an exciting time to look at American legal philosophy. Given the ferment in the law schools and the volume of literature in the law journals it is also a difficult task confidently to extract the main lines of current thought and adequately to assess the significance of current intellectual movements. American lawyers are inclined to point out that there is no such thing as ‘American law’. Rather, in addition to Federal law and the Supreme Court's jurisdiction there are some fifty jurisdictions each with its own Constitution, Legislature and Supreme Court and consequently diversity rather than uniformity is the rule. Equally, the very idea that there is some single, coherent and widely accepted theory of law deserving description as ‘American legal philosophy’ obviously begs all manner of significant questions.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Select Bibliography

Holmes, O. W., ‘The Path of the Law’, Harvard Law Review 10 (1897), 457.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, K., Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice (Boston, 1962).Google Scholar
Frank, J., Law and the Modern Mind, 2nd edn (London, 1963).Google Scholar
Rumble, W. E., American Legal Realism (Ithaca, New York, 1968).Google Scholar
Twining, W., Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement (London, 1973). ‘Talk About Realism’ (Dewey Lecture, 1984), New York University Law Review (1985) (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Posner, R., The Economics of Justice (London, 1981).Google Scholar
Kairys, D., The Politics of Law (New York, 1982).Google Scholar
Unger, R. M., ‘The Critical Legal Studies Movement’, Harvard Law Review 96 (1983), 561.Google Scholar
Ackerman, B. A., Reconstructing American Law (London, 1984).Google Scholar