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Erie As A Way Of Life, Ernest A. Young

Akron Law Review

This essay—presented as the keynote address to the University of Akron School of Law’s conference on “Erie at 80”—considers the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins on the broader landscape of American law. I begin with Erie’s contribution to our modern, positivist understanding of the nature of law. That understanding, however, is under threat from pervasive tendencies, on both the political Left and Right, to collapse the distinction between law as a set of positivist choices adopted by government and law as the principles that we think are just, right, and true. …