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Why Theories Of Law Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Judicial Restraint, Philip E. Soper
Why Theories Of Law Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Judicial Restraint, Philip E. Soper
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The question I explore here, stated in its broadest form, is this: What is the connection between theory and practice between academic claims about how judges should decide cases and the actual behavior of judges as revealed in the opinions they write? More particularly, do theories about the nature of law have any implications for the question whether a judge should adopt an "activist" or a "restrained" approach to deciding cases? As you might infer from my title, I defend here what I call "the skeptical thesis" in answer to both the general and particular questions. Judges pay little or …
Making Sense Of Modern Jurisprudence: The Paradox Of Positivism And The Challenge For Natural Law, Philip E. Soper
Making Sense Of Modern Jurisprudence: The Paradox Of Positivism And The Challenge For Natural Law, Philip E. Soper
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Karl Llewellyn once said, referring to Roscoe Pound's work m jurisprudence, that it was difficult to tell on what level the writing proceeded: sometimes it seemed to be little more than bedtime stones for a tired bar; at other tunes it appeared to be on the level of the after-dinner speech or a thought provoking essay, neither of which were quite the "considered and buttressed scholarly discussion" that one expected to find. Llewellyn's complaint serves as a warning, though a somewhat ambiguous one, to those who give lectures on jurisprudence.
On the one hand, I do not plan to present …