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Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho

Marquette Law Review

Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of“law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, continues to influence the inductive methodologies used today to impart knowledge in American legal education. This lasting influence of the Langdellian scientific conception of law has persisted even as the present crisis in legal education has engendered other reforms. However, subsequent movements of legal thought have revealed …