Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960

Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960
Author: Laura Kalman
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2016-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469620758

For more than one hundred years, Harvard's use of the case method of appellate opinions dominated legal education. Deploring the attempt to reduce law to an autonomous system of rules and principles, the realists at Yale developed a functional approach to the discipline--one that stressed the factual context of the case rather than the legal principles it raised, one that attempted to address issues of social policy by integrating law with the social sciences. Originally published 1986. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Yale Law School and the Sixties

Yale Law School and the Sixties
Author: Laura Kalman
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0807876887

The development of the modern Yale Law School is deeply intertwined with the story of a group of students in the 1960s who worked to unlock democratic visions of law and social change that they associated with Yale's past and with the social climate in which they lived. During a charged moment in the history of the United States, activists challenged senior professors, and the resulting clash pitted young against old in a very human story. By demanding changes in admissions, curriculum, grading, and law practice, Laura Kalman argues, these students transformed Yale Law School and the future of American legal education. Inspired by Yale's legal realists of the 1930s, Yale law students between 1967 and 1970 spawned a movement that celebrated participatory democracy, black power, feminism, and the counterculture. After these students left, the repercussions hobbled the school for years. Senior law professors decided against retaining six junior scholars who had witnessed their conflict with the students in the early 1970s, shifted the school's academic focus from sociology to economics, and steered clear of critical legal studies. Ironically, explains Kalman, students of the 1960s helped to create a culture of timidity until an imaginative dean in the 1980s tapped into and domesticated the spirit of the sixties, helping to make Yale's current celebrity possible.

The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism

The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism
Author: Laura Kalman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1998-08-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780300076479

Legal scholarship is in a state of crisis, Laura Kalman argues in this history of the most prestigious field in law studies: constitutional theory. Since the time of the New Deal, says Kalman, most law scholars have identified themselves as liberals who believe in the power of the Supreme Court to effect progressive social change. In recent years, however, new political and interdisciplinary perspectives have undermined the tenets of legal liberalism, and liberal law professors have enlisted other disciplines in the attempt to legitimize their beliefs. Such prominent legal thinkers as Cass Sunstein, Bruce Ackerman, and Frank Michelman have incorporated the work of historians into their legal theories and arguments, turning to eighteenth-century republicanism--which stressed communal values and an active citizenry--to justify their goals. Kalman, a historian and a lawyer, suggests that reliance on history in legal thinking makes sense at a time when the Supreme Court repeatedly declares that it will protect only those liberties rooted in history and tradition. There are pitfalls in interdisciplinary argumentation, she cautions, for historians' reactions to this use of their work have been unenthusiastic and even hostile. Yet lawyers, law professors, and historians have cooperated in some recent Supreme Court cases, and Kalman concludes with a practical examination of the ways they can work together more effectively as social activists.

Legal Realism and American Law

Legal Realism and American Law
Author: Justin Zaremby
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1441135723

In the first part of the 20th century, a group of law scholars offered engaging, and occasionally disconcerting, views on the role of judges and the relationship between law and politics in the United States. These legal realists borrowed methods from the social sciences to carefully study the law as experienced by lawyers, judges, and average citizens and promoted a progressive vision for American law and society. Legal realism investigated the nature of legal reasoning, the purpose of law, and the role of judges. The movement asked questions which reshaped the study of jurisprudence and continue to drive lively debates about the law and politics in classrooms, courtrooms, and even the halls of Congress. This thorough analysis provides an introduction to the ideas, context, and leading personalities of legal realism. It helps situate an important movement in legal theory in the context of American politics and political thought and will be of great interest to students of judicial politics, American constitutional development, and political theory.

The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought

The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought
Author: William M. Wiecek
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195147131

This volume examines legal ideology in the US from the height of the Gilded Age through the time of the New Deal, when the Supreme Court began to discard orthodox thought in favour of more modernist approaches to law. Wiecek places this era of legal thought in its historical context, integrating social, economic, and intellectual analyses.

Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties

Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties
Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2194
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135947058

This Encyclopedia on American history and law is the first devoted to examining the issues of civil liberties and their relevance to major current events while providing a historical context and a philosophical discussion of the evolution of civil liberties. Coverage includes the traditional civil liberties: freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition. In addition, it also covers concerns such as privacy, the rights of the accused, and national security. Alphabetically organized for ease of access, the articles range in length from 250 words for a brief biography to 5,000 words for in-depth analyses. Entries are organized around the following themes: organizations and government bodies legislation and legislative action, statutes, and acts historical overviews biographies cases themes, issues, concepts, and events. The Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties is an essential reference for students and researchers as well as for the general reader to help better understand the world we live in today.

In Pursuit of Justice

In Pursuit of Justice
Author: Joseph R. Grodin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1989
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780520076471

As Justice William Brennan observes in his foreword, state courts are in some critical ways more important than federal courts in deciding controversies which affect the lives of ordinary citizens. Yet, outside of technical legal materials, little attention is paid to their role in shaping the law. Joseph R. Grodin seeks to fill this vacuum. A law professor and former justice of the California Supreme Court, Grodin was removed from the bench in 1986 along with Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justice Cruz Reynoso after a highly publicized campaign that focused on their decisions in death penalty cases. Drawing on his own experience, and in a lively style spiced with anecdotes and aimed at a general audience, Grodin writes about state appellate courts with insights that only a former justice could provide. Grodin begins with a reflection on the perspective of the bench, addressing such questions as how judges view the arguments of lawyers and how appellate courts cope with an ever-increasing caseload. He describes his own elevation up the judicial ladder and points out significant aspects of the landscape along the way. In Part Two he discusses the judicial functions that are more or less distinctive to state courts, using case descriptions to illustrate the history and development of the common law, the significance of state constitutions for the protection of individual liberties, the special problems posed by enactment of laws through the initiative process, and the dilemmas surrounding the administration of the death penalty. In Part Three he confronts a perennial and vastly important question--do judges make law? Grodin argues that in a sense they do, but only within a framework of constraints that make the process quite different from legislative lawmaking. Moreover, the nature of judicial lawmaking varies from context to context, and it has different dimensions in the state systems than in the federal. Finally, Grodin discusses the election process which is used in most states to decide upon selection or retention of judges. He argues that elections pose a threat to judicial independence, and he considers several alternatives to the current system. This engaging book offers a fascinating look at the courts and will appeal to anyone interested in how judges think about the law.

The Intellectual Sword

The Intellectual Sword
Author: Bruce A. Kimball
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 881
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674245717

A history of Harvard Law School in the twentieth century, focusing on the school’s precipitous decline prior to 1945 and its dramatic postwar resurgence amid national crises and internal discord. By the late nineteenth century, Harvard Law School had transformed legal education and become the preeminent professional school in the nation. But in the early 1900s, HLS came to the brink of financial failure and lagged its peers in scholarly innovation. It also honed an aggressive intellectual culture famously described by Learned Hand: “In the universe of truth, they lived by the sword. They asked no quarter of absolutes, and they gave none.” After World War II, however, HLS roared back. In this magisterial study, Bruce Kimball and Daniel Coquillette chronicle the school’s near collapse and dramatic resurgence across the twentieth century. The school’s struggles resulted in part from a debilitating cycle of tuition dependence, which deepened through the 1940s, as well as the suicides of two deans and the dalliance of another with the Nazi regime. HLS stubbornly resisted the admission of women, Jews, and African Americans, and fell behind the trend toward legal realism. But in the postwar years, under Dean Erwin Griswold, the school’s resurgence began, and Harvard Law would produce such major political and legal figures as Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, and President Barack Obama. Even so, the school faced severe crises arising from the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Critical Legal Studies, and its failure to enroll and retain people of color and women, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Based on hitherto unavailable sources—including oral histories, personal letters, diaries, and financial records—The Intellectual Sword paints a compelling portrait of the law school widely considered the most influential in the world.

The Pragmatism and Prejudice of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The Pragmatism and Prejudice of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Author: Seth Vannatta
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-06-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 149856125X

This book investigates the extent to which various scholarly labels are appropriate for the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. As Louis Menand wrote, “Holmes has been called a formalist, a positivist, a utilitarian, a realist, a historicist, a pragmatist, (not to mention a nihilist).” Each of the eight chapters investigates one label, analyzes the secondary texts that support the use of the term to characterize Holmes’s philosophy, and takes a stand on whether or not the category is appropriate for Holmes by assessing his judicial and nonjudicial publications, including his books, articles, and posthumously published correspondences. The thrust of the collection as a whole, nevertheless, bends toward the stance that Holmes is a pragmatist in his jurisprudence, ethics, and politics. The final chapter, by Susan Haack, makes that case explicitly. Edited by Seth Vannatta, this book will be of particular interest to students and faculty working in law, jurisprudence, philosophy, intellectual history, American Studies, political science, and constitutional theory.

Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay

Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay
Author: Jean Braucher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2013-01-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1782250603

This book contains the papers prepared for a conference held at the Wisconsin Law School in 2011 to honour the work of Stewart Macaulay, one of the most famous contracts scholars of his generation. Macaulay has been writing about contracts and contract law for over 50 years; the 1960s were particularly productive years for him, when he introduced many novel ideas into the scholarly world. Macaulay's foundational work for what is now called relational contract theory was published during this period. Macaulay is also known for his use of empirical research and interdisciplinary theories to illuminate our knowledge of contracting practices. The papers in this volume reflect, in diverse ways, on the subsequent influence and the contemporary relevance of Macaulay's work. All the contributors are important contracts scholars in their own right: David Campbell and John Wightman from the UK, Brian Bix, Jay Feinman, Robert Gordon, Claire Hill, Charles Knapp, Ethan Leib, Deborah Post, Edward Rubin, Carol Sanger, Robert Scott, Gordon Smith, Josh Whitford (with Li-Wen Lin) and William Woodward from the USA. The volume also reproduces Macaulay's most cited paper, 'Non-Contractual Relations in Business', and excerpts from two other important papers of his, 'Private Legislation and the Duty to Read-Business Run by IBM Machine, the Law of Contracts and Credit Cards', and 'The Real and The Paper Deal: Empirical Pictures of Relationships, Complexity and the Urge for Transparent Simple Rules'.