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An Arrow To The Heart: The Love And Death Of Postmodern Legal Scholarship, Stephen M. Feldman
An Arrow To The Heart: The Love And Death Of Postmodern Legal Scholarship, Stephen M. Feldman
Stephen M. Feldman
This Article responds to two critiques of postmodern legal scholarship published by Dennis W. Arrow in the Michigan and Texas Law Reviews. Arrow raises the modernist criticisms that are most often leveled against postmodern legal scholars. If Arrow and the other critics were to be believed, postmodernists are muddle-headed thinkers who write indecipherable jargon-filled nonsense. Even worse, they are irresponsible nihilists who lack political convictions. Such criticisms of postmodernism are unpersuasive because the typical modernist depiction of postmodern legal thought is seriously inaccurate. It is little more than a caricature.The modernists, in other words, are imprecise and downright wrong. Now, …
Playing With The Pieces: Postmodernism In The Lawyer's Toolbox, Stephen M. Feldman
Playing With The Pieces: Postmodernism In The Lawyer's Toolbox, Stephen M. Feldman
Stephen M. Feldman
The distinction between modernism and postmodernism in legal scholarship is highly complex. This Essay does not explore this problem in depth but builds on the recognition that most modernist scholars expressly articulate and defend normative values and goals, while postmodern scholars rarely do so. Postmodernists are themselves enmeshed within the structures of scholarly and lawyerly discourse. As such, they must construct narratives and arguments that use the available rhetorical tools of discourse--namely, they must use modernist and postmodernist concepts to present their views. But whereas modernist scholars use similar tools with earnestness, postmodernist scholars use these tools with irony. Postmodernists …
Diagnosing Power: Postmodernism In Legal Scholarship And Judicial Practice (With An Emphasis On The Teague Rule Against New Rules In Habeas Corpus Cases, Stephen M. Feldman
Diagnosing Power: Postmodernism In Legal Scholarship And Judicial Practice (With An Emphasis On The Teague Rule Against New Rules In Habeas Corpus Cases, Stephen M. Feldman
Stephen M. Feldman
Whereas modernists constantly attempt to reduce the meanings of texts to an essential core or single truth, postmodernists are antifoundationalists and anti-essentialists. According to postmodernists, the meaning of a text is never grounded or stable, and therefore one can always find multiple meanings or truths. Thus, one performs a postmodern flip by taking a segment of a text, event, or concept that apparently has been reduced to a static meaning or truth and suggesting the possible existence of another meaning or truth. The postmodern flip then is completed by exploring how this new meaning or truth of the segment of …