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Full-Text Articles in Law
From Premodern To Modern American Jurisprudence: The Onset Of Positivism, Stephen M. Feldman
From Premodern To Modern American Jurisprudence: The Onset Of Positivism, Stephen M. Feldman
Vanderbilt Law Review
What distinguished premodern from modern American jurisprudence? Whereas most commentators agree that the transition from premodernism to modernism occurred around the Civil War,' recent writings reveal dissension regarding the nature of antebellum and postbellum jurisprudence. In a wonderfully detailed study of Christopher Columbus Langdell, his jurisprudence, and his case method of teaching, William P. LaPiana argues that a defining feature of Langdell's postbellum legal science was a positivism that contrasted with a natural law orientation characteristic of the earlier antebellum jurisprudence. In a provocative critical essay, Robert W. Gordon argues to the contrary: LaPiana's emphasis on natural law during the …
Rodrigo's Thirteenth Chronicle: Legal Formalism And Law's Discontents, Richard Delgado
Rodrigo's Thirteenth Chronicle: Legal Formalism And Law's Discontents, Richard Delgado
Michigan Law Review
Professor! You're back! Rodrigo leaped to his feet and shook my hand fervently. "I heard a rumor you might be coming. What good news! Sit down. Did the authorities give you any trouble?"
From Premodern To Modern American Jurisprudence: The Onset Of Positivism, Stephen M. Feldman
From Premodern To Modern American Jurisprudence: The Onset Of Positivism, Stephen M. Feldman
Stephen M. Feldman
This article explains the crucial differences between premodernism and modernism. A distinctive feature of premodernism was an abiding faith in nature or God as a stable and foundational source of meaning and value. When premodernism gave way to modernism, the commitment to foundationalism remained intact. Modernists believed that knowledge must be firmly grounded on an objective foundation. A crucial distinction between modernism and premodernism, however, lay in their respective ideas of foundations. Whereas premodernists readily accepted God and nature as foundational sources for value and knowledge, modernists rejected religious, natural, and other traditional footings and searched for some alternative foundation. …