Amazon.com
Developing good legal reasoning habits is essential to a quality law practice. Judge Aldisert examines legal thinking from a variety of perspectives to help guide lawyers through appropriate reasoning patterns. One Amazon.com reviewer says the book "provides a shortcut to understanding the basics of legal reasoning, including the common law doctrine of precedent, identifying weaknesses in legal arguments, and fashioning winning arguments through syllogisms." --David Marshall Nissman, J.D.
Book Description
To win in court you must master the elements of legal logic--the ultimate tool of persuasion in the courtroom. In Logic for Lawyers: A Guide to Clear Legal Thinking, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert tells how to use legal reasoning to persuade judges and juries.
A 30-year veteran of the bench, Aldisert helps litigators understand and apply the elements of legal logic. Using these skills, you can argue more persuasively--both in briefs and before the court. And just as critically, you can also expose flaws in adversaries' arguments. The result? A competitive edge in the courtroom.
Rather than miring readers in exotic formulas and theories often found in logic texts, Aldisert explains in broad strokes the basics of logic and its application to legal thinking. You'll gain important insight into the mental processes we use in "thinking like a lawyer."
Customer Reviews:
Great book, but taking a logic course would help.......2006-07-19
I'm a former legal researcher at a law firm and incoming 1L student at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. This book was on my reading list and I must say, it is an outstanding book on the logical process attorneys use on a daily basis. The book is clear and concise, offering in-depth commentary on certain logic terms, that even the average layman can understand somewhat. The book also contains a great source of humorous passages, that help ease the strain of learning a process, that can be somewhat mundane at times. However, once you have a full grasp on the concepts explained in the book, every argument from thereon, becomes a collection of categorical syllogisms that you can dissect and understand.
The only qualm, is that one should have a logic background, if at all possible. I took a logic class in undergrad, so this book was a refresher in some areas and explained how to apply those unearthed principles to the law. As previously mentioned, an average layman can understand some of the concepts, but in the more advanced areas of the book, having a background in logic would help tremendously and preclude the book from sounding too much like a text/casebook.
Excellent book!.......2003-07-13
If you are preparing for law school or attending law school, then you need to read this book. This book will improve your understanding/analysis of common law and improve your ability to construct legal arguments.
Helps to burn off the fog that law profs relish creating.......2003-05-22
I can't say it any better than in Aldisert's own words in his chapter on the Socratic Method: "An understanding of the principles of deduction and induction will significantly assist the student in the daily exercise [i.e. the Socratic Method used by law professors in the classroom]. To lack this understanding is to be substantially, if not totally, disadvantaged."
Highly recommended.......2003-02-04
The reviewer from San Diego has it spot on. I wish this would have been required reading in law school. It would have been infinitely helpful in dealing with the professors' hide-the-ball obfuscatory nonsense. Senior Judge Aldisert has obviously spent a long time contemplating the subject, thus it will be well worth your time and effort to not just read this book, but to closely study it. Aside from its great value in assisting legal studies, a side benefit of the book is that you'll probably find that you start spotting all sorts of logical fallacies in the world at large. This can be both good and bad, of course. Good for sharpness of mind, bad for romantic/familial relationships. We cannot effectively deal with our loved ones through the strict scrutiny of a legal lens. Be sure to take it off when appropriate. But I'm getting off track here. In short, if you acquire this book before or during law school, consider yourself fortunate.
How to Think Like a Good Lawyer.......2001-05-06
Judge Aldisert's book cogently explains the fundamental role that logic plays in law. For the law student (or pre-law student), it provides a shortcut to understanding the basics of legal reasoning, including the common law doctrine of precedent, identifying weaknesses in legal arguments, and fashioning winning arguments through syllogisms. The rest of your law school classmates may flail in the darkness of the Socratic Method, but this book illuminates what the prof is attempting to do.
I'm an attorney and did not have the benefit of Judge Aldisert's wisdom until after graduation. But he explained many murky concepts that I had only vaguely understood. Before reading the book, I could tell you that one argument was better than another; now I can put my finger on why. This book is for anyone who wants to improve his or her legal reasoning skills.
Book Description
H L A Hart's The Concept of Law is the classic text for the study of jurisprudence and legal philosophy and is probably the most important work of legal philosophy written this century. This second edition is particularly valuable as it combines Hart's original text with a postscript, in which he responds to criticisms of his theory levelled by such notable scholars as Dworkin, Fuller and Finnis. Written by him but only discovered after his death, it has been ably edited by Joseph Raz and Penelope Bulloch of Balliol College, Oxford.
Customer Reviews:
A good start for analytical jurisprudence, but no more.......2003-11-21
Hart takes apart the legal positivism of Austin and acknowledges some validity in natural law theory. But Hart fails to connect the "minimum content of natural law" with his analysis of a "rule of recongition" that allows a legal system to exist.
Hart's critique of Austin's legal positivism is right on and rightly consigns it to the dust bin as a way of explaining all manifestations of the phenomenon of law. Law as a threat backed up by force simply cannot explain contracts, wills, and trusts. The law doesn't just threaten people, it also empowers them. Positivism also fails to acknowledge the "internal" aspect of legal rules as well as failing to give an account of how law is recognized, clarified, and changed. Hart posits a "rule of recongition" to take care of this. Hart acknowledges a "minimum content of natural law" that explains the purpose of law as responding to certain human needs (bodily vulnerability, limited altruism, etc.). This gave rise to the revival of natural law theory in Anglophone jurisprudence in the 20th century. But Hart just kind of sticks the natural law chapter in his book without saying how it connects to the rest of what he says about legal rules and systems. Look at Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights for the "extension" of Hart's project.
Obligatory reading........2003-10-05
One of the highest achievements in the history of jurisprudence. Simple to read, complex to thoroughly grasp, written in clear prose but full of ideas. Previous familiarity with Kelsen and Austin should prove helpful to extract the most out of this book. You can follow it by reading Dworkin and Bobbio (sadly unavailable in English - his Teoria della norma giuridica and Teoria dell'ordenamento giuridico are as obligatory as Kelsen and Hart).
Even though it is a work of legal positivism, it contains one of the best analyses of natural law and ethics I have ever read. This is, much more than the elements it's most famous for (the distinction between primary and secondary rules), what makes The Concept of Law shine.
The postscript, also sold separetely at Amazon, is included in this second edition of the book.
a seminal text on legal philosophy and jurisprudence.......1998-04-20
One of the most important books written in the field of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. A must-read for anyone who wants to talk intelligently about the topic. Each of Dr. Hart's chapters has been the springboard for entire areas of discussion since its publication, such as law as a system of rules, the separation of law and morality, etc. After you finish this book, read Prof. Dworkin's critique in "The Model of Rules," 35 Univ.Chi.L.Rev. 14 (1967) (excerpted in "The Philosophy of Law") and Prof. Dworkin's "Taking Rights Seriously" to see how Hart's theories have affect jurisprudential scholarship since the publication of this text in 1961. Again, if one had to select the top thinkers in the field, it's Austin, Hart, and Dworkin.
Inadequacies of Hart's concept of a rule.......1998-02-28
Hart insists that there are many differen kinds of rules - he only 'elucidetes social rules' -but he also accepts that not all legal rules are social rules. What then are they? The foundation of his account of a social rule is an aspect of the form of life (vide Wittgenstein) underlying the use of language - but it is life without the multiplicity of activity at any one time and without conflict.
Book Description
This volume will be of interest and value to students of logic, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as to members of the legal profession and to everyone concerned with problems of government and jurisprudence. By citing a large number of cases, the author makes his presentation of the processes of judicial interpretation particularly lucid.
Customer Reviews:
Not Quite an Introduction.......2007-06-16
While Levi clarifies much that's uncertain about legal interpretation, I don't recommend this book for those with no previous studies in law. If you must read it -- and there ARE rewards from doing so -- be sure to have a law dictionary at hand.
Besides using legal terms that aren't explained, Levi's prose is so dense as to be almost unreadable, but worse, it lacks anything resembling clarity. He often barges straight in to lengthy analyses of concepts without explaining the basic terms he uses or even why they're relevant; these must be induced from the text while reading. Since Levi is usually demonstrating through examples how concepts change over time, however, it's difficult to pin down what the concept means at any one point, before Levi has already jumped ahead to the next point without explaining either.
It's also highly recommended that you look up the cases Levi cites, since his quotations from judges rarely contain enough critical information to piece together the actual concept involved. Finding the original and just reading the parts that he replaced with ellipses add an infinite degree of clarity.
Helpful.......2006-06-20
I found this book to be helpful but somewhat basic. I is outlined nicely and is easy to follow. Good future reference. Recommend to students.
A Great Read.......2006-01-07
I appreciate Edward Levi's attention to detail. This book definitely goes beyond the standard textbook in terms of putting together a guide that is both interesting to read and informative. I'd recommend it to anybody in my situation, planning to attend law school, or even to practicing attorneys in need of a handy, compact reference guide to the basics.
Law of the land.......2005-04-01
The power to determine the law of the land resides within every citizen of the country by means of electing the officials they choose and the judicial system only upholds the law. The citizens of a country elect their leaders and once elected they are enshrined with the right to uphold the economic and political stability but any improper actions of a government should be corrected by means of the judicial process rather than by any political process. All differing opinions should be allowed to coexist with checks and balances as determined by the judicial system.
ambiguity made clear.......2002-08-17
Legal reasoning is famously ambiguous: there's no objective way to determine the outcome of a given case as there is with a physics problem. If you know the weight of an item and the height from which it drops, you are able to determine fairly objectively (i) the rate at which it will fall to the earth and (ii) the time it will take to fall to the earth from the point at which it is dropped. Law, unfortunately, is not so straight-forward. Understanding its assumptions is absolutely critical to developing any sort of sophisticated understanding about the ways in which law affects civilization. This book provides a broad outline of those assumptions. I suggest having at least a rudimentary background in intellectual history and political philosophy to get the most out of this book.
Book Description
What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting.
Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay readers without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars--it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment--but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places--and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well.
This book will undoubtedly raise the discourse on the increasingly important topic of the economics of law, giving both supporters and critics of the economic perspective a place to organize their ideas.
Download Description
What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting. Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay readers without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars--it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment--but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places--and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well.
Customer Reviews:
Layman Introduction to Economics of Law.......2007-08-04
Law's Order is an introduction of applying economics analysis on laws for common layman. Comparing with the other textbooks on economics analysis of law, Law's Order is less academic. In Law's Order, David Friedman firstly introduces daily life situations, such as "marriage, sex and babies", "tort", "antitrust", etc..., and apply the economic analysis on these situations and discuss how the law can help these situations attain a better result according to economics analysis. The reader should find that the Law is more or less economics efficiency. Although this is not a textbook but it is suitable to be used as a textbook on Law and Economics.
chris tam
hong kong
Enlightening, Fun & Important Read.......2006-05-27
It's a dense and fun work in a very interesting and important topic. It was my first book on law&economics, and I am very satisfied with it. I highly recommend it especially for those who love economics--you will learn fascinating insights. The chapters on tort and criminal law were my favorites. David Friedman is a great teacher, in print or talk (if you haven't seen him speak, don't miss a chance).
Should Voodoo practice be punishable?.......2004-01-06
As soon as I was finished with this book, I turned around and read it again. Friedman is picking up a theme that he introduced towards the end of the revised Machinery of Freedom, in which he states that in order to understand certain mechanisms, we must undertake the economic analysis of law. This discipline was generally considered to have been initiated by Ronald Coase and taken up and popularized by Richard Posner. Friedman's own work advances the study into areas of law that relate to the internet and computers.
This particular book, however, concentrates on advancing the work done by Posner to a wider audience. Posner's perspective is that of a very, very talented legal theorist attempting to apply economic tools to law; Friedman's is that of a very talented economist applying his own discipline to law.
The complete book is available online; in fact the book was intended to be an off-line anchor for a number of other links. Friedman does away with references to landmark cases, mathematics, and other references in the book, and moves them all to the online version. While it seemed like a good idea at thte time, I ultimately found it to be annoying.
I would say that this is the first book I've read that connects technical economic ideas - like efficiency, the Coase Theorem, externalities, and rent-seeking - to the real world with practical applications.
Like whether or not voodoo practice should be punishable as attempted murder (huh? Read the book - this and other stories are both entertaining and enlightening).
interesting read, annoying footnote approach.......2003-08-07
Liked the book. But instead of using citations and footnotes, he uses icons that point to his web site. This is supposed to be make it easier to read, but it's very annoying. I hope this doesn't become a trend.
Nice, but a little bit too biased.......2003-07-14
David Friedman is anarcho-capitalist who teaches economics to law students. This book, written mainly for laymen, shows both sides of him. He explains the relevant ideas from economics quite well and applies them to legal questions. He argues that even apart from moral arguments, many laws can be justified by economic efficiency.
The logic is something like this: Stealing is a process where someone takes something away from someone without the consent of that person. One loses, one gains. So what's the problem? The problem is that the thief spends energy on stealing, the potential victims on securing themselves and to some degree they produce less, since they may not keep everything. Therefore stealing is inefficient in a certain sense. Many laws can be justified on such grounds.
He also describes the legal system of ancient Iceland, a system that worked without government. Inspired by that, Friedman proposes some rather radical ideas like allowing murderes to buy themselves free. It also happens that the more radical ideas are the ones with the worst arguments in favor of them. He makes some rather strange assumptions (like that murderes are able to pay millions of dollars...).
The book is clearly biased, but it is well written and explains economic ideas quite nicely. It's also pobably the only book on law and economics that is written for laymen.
Average customer rating:
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Law As a Social System (Oxford Socio-Legal Studies)
Niklas Luhmann
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Risk: A Sociological Theory (Communication and Social Order)
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Social Systems (Writing Science)
ASIN: 0198262388 |
Book Description
Modern systems theory provides a new paradigm for the analysis of society. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, its leading exponent, explores its implications for our understanding of law. Luhmann argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern society is seriously deficient. In this volume he lays out the theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance our understanding of contemporary society and, in particular, of the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within that society. In systems theory, society is its communications: they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate within a physical world and how different sub-systems of communication operate alongside each other. In this volume, Luhmann uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory: what differentiates law from other parts of society? However, unlike conventional legal theory, this volume seeks to provide an answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that answers this question in a manner applicable not only to law, but also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the media, and education. This truly sociological approach offers profound insights into the relationships between law and all of these other social systems.
Book Description
A favorite among law students and professors alike, the Examples & Explanations series is ideal for studying, reviewing and testing your understanding through application of hypothetical examples. Authored by leading professors with extensive classroom experience, Examples & Explanations titles offer hypothetical questions in the subject area, complemented by detailed explanations that allow you to test your knowledge of the topic, and compare your own analysis.
Customer Reviews:
dont rely on this book for MPRE.......2006-11-07
This book is a great overview to professional responsibility and very interesting but if you rely on it to take the MPRE you will fail. only write this for people out there like me who are taking a second Bar and MPRE after moving to another state, years after completing law school, and looking for MPRE study materials online. There arent ANY MPRE TEST QUESTIONS IN HERE - you have to do old tests, tons of them, to pass.
Saved me!.......2006-11-06
This Examples & Explanations supplement saved me! My current textbook was literally just crap and I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to be getting out the readings. But reading this book through, it made it so much clearer. I delayed getting this book, because the review below me mentioned that portions were out of date. It is not completely true, however. Yes, there are some sections where the Rules are misnumbered (due to the 2003 amendments), but the author corrects it by telling you what the new Rule number is. I was very careful when reading this chapter because of the warning of the other reviewer, but I have yet to find anything incorrect with the information. Yes, maybe the author could have taken the time to just change the numbers of the rules instead of adding footnotes, but the book does the job anyway. I highly recommend it.
Warning! Portions out of Date.......2005-12-08
I am generally quite a fan of the Examples and Explanations series and this is generally true of PR. The book provides a good overview of the various topics, including a integration of appropriate concepts from the Federal Rules, common law, the Model Rules and the Model Code. In terms of overall concept-based teaching, the book does a fine job.
However, the book is out of date. Though it carries a 2004 copyright date, it omits some serious changes to the Model Rules in 2003, notably changes to Rule 1.6 (see, e.g. page 164 of the book if you bought it). In the introduction the author notes changes made in 2003--which might lead the reader to believe such changes were included in the text of the book, though that does not appear to have happened. No errata is offered on the publisher's website (listed in the book as www.aspenpublishers.com), nor on the author's law school website. Such errors often make me question the basis of the rest of the book.
Furthermore, for those using the book primarily to help understand the Model Rules, there is no index or table indicating where specifc rules are discussed. Yes, the index contains a topical listing, but a rule-by-rule lising would be very helpful for this topic (the BarBri PR supplement, for example, contains such a list). So if you know, for example, that you need help undertanding Rule 4.1, there is no way to find those pages in the Examples and Explanations book.
Hopefully the author or publisher will take note of these issues and correct them in an upcoming version or include a note about needed changes.
Great Prep for the MPRE!.......2005-10-22
I took the MPRE in NY (where the minimum passing score is 85) without having taken a course in Professional Responsibility either through law school or one of the bar-prep companies. I read this book once, took a practice examination available at the MPRE website, and scored 108. As with most of the Aspen E&E series books, this is a great introduction to an area of the law that you have to know. It is easy to read, and works well for MPRE preparation.
Great.......2004-10-31
This is an excellent supplement for professional responsibility. An excellent summary of the ABA Rules. The examples were also very helpful in preparing for the final examination.
Book Description
For more than 25 years, Burton's Legal Thesaurus has been the one-of-a-kind reference tool in a field where the precision and accuracy of language is vitally important. The latest edition of this classic resource adds 1,000 new words, terms, and expressions to the roughly 7,000 already present, including nontechnical words regularly used by attorneys.
“Prepared by lawyers, comprehensive, up-to-date, easy to use.”-American Bar Association Journal
Customer Reviews:
Useful book.......2007-09-16
The book is very useful. However, the Latin phrases are probably no longer necessary in the U.S. legal practice.
I've noticed one error that is carried over from one edition to the next: in Index under the entry "in error" look for word "fallacioadmit." I speculate that a portion of text disappeared and fallacious was merged with admit. The words that follow admit do not appear to belong in the "in error" article.
Important book. The "Roget's" of the legal profession........2007-05-08
This book, now in its fourth edition, is an essential companion to Black's Law Dictionary, Garner's Legal Usage book, and other essential legal reference books. Great for law students, lawyers, judges, paralegals/legal assistants, and just about anyone else dealing with legal language. This book gives alternatives to stilted, overused, and misused, language. Worth the price (especially if one compare it on a site like Nextag, Shopzilla, and others).
Very Helpful Product.......2005-09-26
This is the legal thesaurus that all my law professors suggested. So far it has been very helpful in research and writing.
Relied on daily at work.......2003-05-17
Next to case law, I find Burton's Legal Thesaurus indispensible in writing appellate briefs. I only wish it were available in a downloadable form for use with my word processing program.
Indispensable Tool for Your Legal Writing Kit.......2000-06-17
"Good luck," my employer wished as he handed me a plane ticket and a tome of a background packet. I was leaving on a critical six-week business trip to an alien state in the midwest. No problem - except that five days prior the law review had accepted me as one of three evening division 2Ls for candidacy and my first case abstracts were due in twenty days. Hmmm . . .
From my hotel room, I scanned, identified, analyzed, condensed, reviewed, and rewrote the abstracts. Then did it again. And again. And again. But I was missing something. I was missing that "oomph" that propels a reader when reading legal material. And I didn't know what to do.
I decided to take a "creative" break down at the local (bookstore). Of course, I immediately gravitated to the law section of the store and, before you could say "double espresso, please," I had found it! Burton's Legal Thesaurus.
I opened the pages and my heart fluttered. Over 5,000 entries, legal synonyms for any legal term that came to mind, definitions, an overview of federal "plain language" requirements, associated legal concepts, and the list goes on! I wiped away a tear.
I rushed back to my hotel room and my fingers began flying over the laptop. My abstracts sang with power and precision! I could feel the reader compelled - nay, helpless - to turn the page! Burton's Legal Thesaurus had saved the day! I was now a jurisprudence scholar!
Eh, not really. But it really helped out when I didn't have access to my usual materials. However, one thing of which I can assure you, I'll be using this thesaurus for the rest of my career. If you've ever tried to write a legal document with a conventional thesaurus, you've probably felt the same way I did - close, but not close enough. But where do I find "close enough"? Read some more cases? Subscribe to a half dozen law journals? Hang out with the professors? This book definitely dispenses with that problem. You'll find everything you need to write a work filled with persuasion and vigor contained within its pages. If you're not that creative with legal lingo (as I, obviously, am not), you need to order it now. Frankly, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don't.
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- An excellent overview
- Pragmatism that's reasonable.
- The polymath, Richard Posner, strikes again!
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The Problems of Jurisprudence
Richard A. Posner
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory
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ASIN: 0674708768 |
Book Description
In this book, one of our country's most distinguished scholar-judges shares with us his vision of the law. For the past two thousand years, the philosophy of law has been dominated by two rival doctrines. One contends that law is more than politics and yields, in the hands of skillful judges, correct answers to even the most difficult legal questions; the other contends that law is politics through and through and that judges wield essentially arbitrary powers. Rejecting these doctrines as too metaphysical in the first instance and too nihilistic in the second, Richard Posner argues for a pragmatic jurisprudence, one that eschews formalism in favor of the factual and the empirical. Laws, he argues, are not abstract, sacred entities, but socially determined goads for shaping behavior to conform with society's values.
Examining how judges go about making difficult decisions, Posner argues that they cannot rely on either logic or science, but must fall back on a grab bag of informal methods of reasoning that owe less than one might think to legal training and experience. Indeed, he reminds us, the greatest figures in American law have transcended the traditional conceptions of the lawyer's craft. Robert Jackson did not attend law school and Benjamin Cardozo left before getting a degree. Holmes was neither the most successful of lawyers nor the most lawyerly of judges. Citing these examples, Posner makes a plea for a law that frees itself from excessive insularity and takes all knowledge, practical and theoretical, as grist for its mill.
The pragmatism that Posner espouses implies looking at problems concretely, experimentally, without illusions, with an emphasis on keeping diverse paths of inquiry open, and, above all, with the insistence that social thought and action be evaluated as instruments to desired human goals rather than as ends in themselves. In making his arguments, he discusses notable figures in jurisprudence from Antigonc to Ronald Dworkin as well as recent movements ranging from law and economics to civic republicanism, and feminism to libertarianism. All are subjected to Posner's stringent analysis in a fresh and candid examination of some of the deepest problems presented by the enterprise of law.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent overview.......2005-09-06
For newcomers to the philosophy of law and for anyone interested in legal reasoning and the difficult problems of jurisprudence, this book gives an excellent overview. The author discusses the history of the subject as well as giving a thorough discussion of modern developments. In addition, many references are given for readers who want to investigate the subject in more detail. The philosophy of law has become even more important in recent years due to the social tensions surrounding the Supreme Court of the United States as well as the difficult legal issues involved in nation building.
The following questions, among many others, arose for this reviewer when reading the book, with some of them being answered in the book and some not:
1. What is the difference, if any, between standards and rules?
2. What is the difference, if any, between substantive justice and formal justice?
3. Does the granting of broad discretionary powers to legal officials encourage abuse?
4. When a legal rule ages, does it become less or more applicable to the activities it is supposed to refer to, i.e. will judges become more tempted to declare exceptions and extensions to it?
5. How important is the use of formal logic in legal deliberations?
6. Can most, or even all, legal argumentation/deliberation be given an algorithmic or formulaic definition?
7. Can statutes or constitutions, being forms of communication, be verified in the same way as scientific hypotheses can?
8. Does good legal judgment consist of caution, detachment, imagination, and common sense or must these be supplemented by other activities or modes of cognition?
9. Is law an autonomous discipline, with the designation "autonomous" given its usual intuitive meaning?
10. Can the complexity of legal deliberations/reasoning of a judge be modeled successfully using a language or framework that is clearly not being used by that judge?
11. Is the "test of time" a legitimate criterion for accepting certain legal practices?
12. What is the role of metaphors in legal reasoning?
13. What is the role of defeasible reasoning in legal deliberation/argumentation?
14. Are legal deliberations always inconclusive?
15. Is there any need, from the standpoint of rational legal deliberations, for the "trappings of the judicial process," i.e. the elaborate courtrooms with elevated benches and compelled etiquette on the part of the observers and litigants?
16. Is criminal law dependent on the notion of free will?
17. Assuming that certainty is unattainable in most legal deliberations, what is the role of probability theory in these deliberations?
18. Is the interpretation of legal texts deductive, and if not, what does it mean to interpret a legal text?
19. What is the difference between common law and statutory law?
20. Does agreement on the meaning of legal texts depend ultimately on the use of force?
21. How does one characterize an activist judge from a non-activist one?
22. When a legal text or document is examined, is it always important to acknowledged the intent of the individual(s) who wrote it?
23. Can interpretations of legal documents ever be politically neutral?
24. Can a legal system be constructed that would be free of errors?
25. How influential has feminist thought been in the philosophy of law in the last few decades?
26. What is the nature of "prudentialism" that is advocated by the author of the book?
Pragmatism that's reasonable........2002-06-20
What is law? How exactly do judges reason out it's kinks? Does it operate on presumtions of behaviourism or free-will? Why aren't lawyers or judges puzzled by these quandries? Posner seeks answers and ends up in a not-so-comforting place.
This book starts small and ends big. From epistemology (how we gain legal knowledge) through ontology up through his concluding 'Pragmatist Manifesto' the book is quite philosophical and this may be offputting to some in the legal profession. As usual though, Posner tackles his subjects in a clear, fast-paced and exciting way. The task that Posner sets for himself is to forge a place in legal theory (or lack of?) between two radical extremes: On one hand, there is the view that law is a completely isolated profession and legal reasoning is completely internal to it. The other sees law as a clever guise for politics- it's 'methods' being a subterfuge for the judge to justify her political views.
Through pragmatism, Posner sees both theories as gross exageration- the first, falsley denying law's susceptibility to outside non-legal techniques and the second's refusal to acknowledge the judiciary's independence from the legislature.
As Posner acknowledges in the intro, Posner's view here is middle of the road and to many, it will be boring. He doesn't take sides, rather he creates a side: that of legal pragmatism. No matter what your persuasion philosophtical, political or jurisprudential persuasion, there's nothing like a little Posner to get you thinking!!
The polymath, Richard Posner, strikes again!.......1998-01-31
This book's analysis of the problems that confront judges when they decide cases is cogent, persuasive, and (without a dictionary) difficult to understand. However, if you can master the blended vocabulary of psychology, epistimology, and hermeneutics it is a brilliant tour de force that raises troubling questions about how to read foundational legal documents. A must read for legal scholars.-Kelly Whiting
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- Modern Real Estate Practice in Pennsylvania
- Monster
- Natural Swimming Pools: Inspiration For Harmony With Nature (Schiffer Design Book)
- Objectivity in Law and Morals (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)
- Operation Lucifer : The Chase Capture and Trial of Adolf Hitler
- Outrageous Misconduct
- Outrageous Misconduct
- Patent Strategy: For Researchers and Research Managers
- Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks for Dummies
- Practical Real Estate Law (The West Legal Studies Series)
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