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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
A Few Steps Toward An Explanatory Theory Of International Law, Anthony D'Amato
A Few Steps Toward An Explanatory Theory Of International Law, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
If any one sentence about international law has stood the test of time, it is Louis Henkin's: "almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time." If this is true, why is this true? What makes it true? How do nations invent rules that then turn around and bind them? Are international rules simply pragmatic and expedient? Or do they embody values such as the need for international cooperation? Is international law a mixed game of conflict and cooperation because of its rules, or do its rules make …
Legal Realism Explains Nothing, Anthony D'Amato
Legal Realism Explains Nothing, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
I argue that American legal realism as derived from Oliver Wendell Holmes's prediction theory of law was misinterpreted, and that a deeper examination of law-as-prediction might help to reduce the pathology of judicial lawmaking that has been the unfortunate consequence of legal realism.
The Rule Of Law Is Dead! Long Live The Rule Of Law!, Keith J. Bybee
The Rule Of Law Is Dead! Long Live The Rule Of Law!, Keith J. Bybee
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
Polls show that a significant proportion of the public considers judges to be political. This result holds whether Americans are asked about Supreme Court justices, federal judges, state judges, or judges in general. At the same time, a large majority of the public also believes that judges are fair and impartial arbiters, and this belief also applies across the board. In this paper, I consider what this half-law-half-politics understanding of the courts means for judicial legitimacy and the public confidence on which that legitimacy rests. Drawing on the Legal Realists, and particularly on the work of Thurman Arnold, I argue …
At War With The Eclectics: Mapping Pragmatism In Contemporary Legal Analysis, Justin Desautels-Stein
At War With The Eclectics: Mapping Pragmatism In Contemporary Legal Analysis, Justin Desautels-Stein
ExpressO
This article has two primary goals. The first is descriptive, and seeks to respond to what appears to be an increasing degree of confusion over the word “pragmatism,” especially as it is used in a good deal of legal literature. This descriptive aim begins by separating out three general categories of pragmatism: (1) the so-called “everyday” pragmatism familiar to the American vernacular, (2) the classical philosophy of the early pragmatist authors like William James and John Dewey, and (3) pragmatism as understood in the context of law. The majority of the article is subsequently concerned with exploring this last category, …