Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Langdell Upside-Down: The Anticlassical Jurisprudence Of Anticodification, Lewis A. Grossman
Langdell Upside-Down: The Anticlassical Jurisprudence Of Anticodification, Lewis A. Grossman
ExpressO
At the end of the nineteenth century, the American legal community engaged in an impassioned debate about whether the substantive common law should be codified. The American codifiers, like their civil law counterparts in Europe, sought to make the law largely “judge proof” by reducing the function of courts to the nondiscretionary application of clearly stated statutory principles and rules. By contrast, codification opponents, led by James Coolidge Carter, fought to preserve the centrality of courts in the American legal system. In light of the influential scholarship portraying Gilded Age law as dominated by Langdellian “classical legal thought,” one might …