Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Formalism, Realism, And The War On Drugs, David Cole
Formalism, Realism, And The War On Drugs, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
One of the ways our legal system has avoided confronting this ugly reality is through a commitment to legal formalism. Legal formalism allows us to ignore the social determinants that my AUSA friend saw every day as he prosecuted federal drug cases. As my colleague Professor Michael Seidman has suggested, legal formalism, which has been effectively critiqued and displaced by legal realism in many other areas of law, continues to exercise considerable influence over the way we think about criminal law. This formalist approach, in my view, has strongly affected the way we approach the drug problem. One consequence is …