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Book Beyond Legal Minds

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Brant
  • Publisher : BRILL
  • Release : 2018-12-10
  • ISBN : 9004385959
  • Pages : 533 pages

Download or read book Beyond Legal Minds written by William Brant and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, William Brant inquires how violence is reduced. Social causes of violence are exposed. War, sexual domination, leadership, propagandizing and comedy are investigated. Legal systems are explored as reducers and implementers of violence and threats.

Book Beyond Legal Minds

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Allen Brant
  • Publisher : Value Inquiry Book
  • Release : 2019
  • ISBN : 9789004385313
  • Pages : 521 pages

Download or read book Beyond Legal Minds written by William Allen Brant and published by Value Inquiry Book. This book was released on 2019 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, William Brant uncovers social causes of violence, in search of reductive measures. Multiple legal systems are explored as reducers and implementers of violence and threats, especially criminal justice systems. War, propagandizing, power, corporate and governmental involvement in social domination, statehood, dangerous ideologies, and tribal sexual domination are explored in many cultures. Various levels and methods are given for observing, measuring and analyzing how people think and behave regarding the law, including examples of comedy. A theoretical chapter presents legal theory in relation to conceptions of possibility and misconceptions. These ideas are applied to judiciaries, which expose winning strategies for lawyers' desired verdicts. Dr. Brant accounts for the interconnections between sexual selection, legal systems and wars.

Book Beyond Legal Reasoning  a Critique of Pure Lawyering

Download or read book Beyond Legal Reasoning a Critique of Pure Lawyering written by Jeffrey Lipshaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of learning to ‘think like a lawyer’ is one of the cornerstones of legal education in the United States and beyond. In this book, Jeffrey Lipshaw provides a critique of the traditional views of ‘thinking like a lawyer’ or ‘pure lawyering’ aimed at lawyers, law professors, and students who want to understand lawyering beyond the traditional warrior metaphor. Drawing on his extensive experience at the intersection of real world law and business issues, Professor Lipshaw presents a sophisticated philosophical argument that the "pure lawyering" of traditional legal education is agnostic to either truth or moral value of outcomes. He demonstrates pure lawyering’s potential both for illusions of certainty and cynical instrumentalism, and the consequences of both when lawyers are called on as dealmakers, policymakers, and counsellors. This book offers an avenue for getting beyond (or unlearning) merely how to think like a lawyer. It combines legal theory, philosophy of knowledge, and doctrine with an appreciation of real-life judgment calls that multi-disciplinary lawyers are called upon to make. The book will be of great interest to scholars of legal education, legal language and reasoning as well as professors who teach both doctrine and thinking and writing skills in the first year law school curriculum; and for anyone who is interested in seeking a perspective on ‘thinking like a lawyer’ beyond the litigation arena.

Book Inside the American Legal Mind

Download or read book Inside the American Legal Mind written by Kevin J. Fandl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside the American Legal Mind:An International Practitioner Guide to American Legal Reasoning clearly explains how to navigate within U.S. legal practice. A combination of common law legal history with the straight-shooting American style has resulted in an approach to issue analysis that is structurally different from other fields and from the civil law systems common in other countries. Precedent drives the interpretive process, providing the pillars upon which an American lawyer builds a case. Understanding how to capture relevant aspects of precedent, merge those aspects with precedent from seemingly distinct cases, and apply the resulting formula to a given fact pattern can be a harrowing experience for anyone untrained in American legal thinking. This book bridges that gap for aspiring lawyers in America as well as for foreign legal practitioners. Fandl clearly and concisely demonstrates how to research, analyze, and ultimately condense legal ideas into written form in the American legal style. Suitable for undergraduates in U.S. Criminal Justice programs and for LL.M. courses, as well as for continuing education for professionals.

Book Beyond the First Draft

    Book Details:
  • Author : Megan McAlpin
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2024-01-31
  • ISBN : 9781531027131
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Beyond the First Draft written by Megan McAlpin and published by . This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the First Draft helps law students and lawyers approach the often difficult task of editing their own writing. The book starts with the fundamental idea that good writing is organized, vigorous, clear, and polished. Its ultimate goal is to help students and practitioners understand that good writing cannot be accomplished in a single draft; good writers must be good editors. Each chapter of the book is organized around one of the principles of good writing and begins with an editing checklist for accomplishing that principle of good writing. The book explains each item in the checklist, providing both students and lawyers with the instruction and straightforward editing tips that they need to become effective editors. Beyond the First Draft was written with law students, practitioners, and legal writing professors in mind. Its straightforward approach makes even those difficult-to-understand grammatical concepts accessible to everyone through frequent, easy-to-understand reminders, explanations, and examples. The updated second edition of the book includes a new introduction that helps writers think about the ways in which language evolves over time and puts the book's expanded coverage of pronouns into context. In addition, this new introduction will give professors and students alike the opportunity to think critically about the ways in which the formal written English of legal writing differs from both informal written and spoken English.

Book Minding the Law

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anthony G. AMSTERDAM
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2009-06-30
  • ISBN : 0674020200
  • Pages : 467 pages

Download or read book Minding the Law written by Anthony G. AMSTERDAM and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law/tilte will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice. Table of Contents: 1. Invitation to a Journey 2. On Categories 3. Categorizing at the Supreme Court Missouri v. Jenkins and Michael H. v. Gerald D. 4. On Narrative 5. Narratives at Court Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Freeman v. Pitts 6. On Rhetorics 7. The Rhetorics of Death McCleskey v. Kemp 8. On the Dialectic of Culture 9. Race, the Court, and America's Dialectic From Plessy through Brown to Pitts and Jenkins 10. Reflections on a Voyage Appendix: Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in the Prigg, Pitts, and Brown Opinions Notes Table of Cases Index Reviews of this book: Amsterdam, a distinguished Supreme Court litigator, wanted to do more than share the fruits of his practical experience. He also wanted to...get students to think about thinking like a lawyer...To decode what he calls "law-think," he enlisted the aid of the venerable cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...[and] the collaboration has resulted in [this] unusual book. --James Ryerson, Lingua Franca Reviews of this book: It is hard to imagine a better time for the publication of Minding the Law, a brilliant dissection of the court's work by two eminent scholars, law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam and cultural anthropologist Jerome Bruner...Issue by issue, case by case, Amsterdam and Bruner make mincemeat of the court's handling of the most important constitutional issue of the modern era: how to eradicate the American legacy of race discrimination, especially against blacks. --Edward Lazarus, Los Angeles Times Book Review Reviews of this book: This book is a gem...[Its thesis] is easily stated but remarkably unrecognized among a shockingly large number of lawyers and law professors: law is a storytelling enterprise thoroughly entrenched in culture....Whereas critical legal theorists have talked among themselves for the past two decades, Amsterdam and Bruner seek to engage all of us in a dialogue. For that, they should be applauded. --Daniel R. Williams, New York Law Journal Reviews of this book: In Minding the Law, Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their book is premised on the conviction that many of the choices made in Supreme Court opinions 'lack any justification in the text'...Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability. --Mitchell Goodman, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Reviews of this book: What do controversial Supreme Court decisions and classic age-old tales of adultery, villainy, and combat have in common? Everything--at least in the eyes of [Amsterdam and Bruner]. In this substantial study, which is equal parts dense and entertaining, the authors use theoretical discussions of literary technique and myths to expose what they see as the secret intentions of Supreme Court opinions...Studying how lawyers and judges employ the various literary devices at their disposal and noting the similarities between legal thinking and classic tactics of storytelling and persuasion, they believe, can have 'astonishing consciousness-retrieving effects'...The agile minds of Amsterdam and Bruner, clearly storehouses of knowledge on a range of subjects, allow an approach that might sound far-fetched occasionally but pays dividends in the form of gained perspective--and amusement. --Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Washington Times Reviews of this book: Stories and the way judges-intentionally or not-categorize and spin them, are as responsible for legal rulings as logic and precedent, Mr. Amsterdam and Mr. Bruner said. Their novel attempt to reach into the psyche of...members of the Supreme Court is part of a growing interest in a long-neglected and cryptic subject: the psychology of judicial decision-making. --Patricia Cohen, New York Times Most law professors teach by the 'case method,' or say they do. In this fascinating book, Anthony Amsterdam--a lawyer--and Jerome Bruner--a psychologist--expose how limited most case 'analysis' really is, as they show how much can be learned through the close reading of the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that constitute an opinion (or other pieces of legal writing). Reading this book will undoubtedly make one a better lawyer, and teacher of lawyers. But the book's value and interest goes far beyond the legal profession, as it analyzes the way that rhetoric--in law, politics, and beyond--creates pictures and convictions in the minds of readers and listeners. --Sanford Levinson, author of Constitutional Faith Tony Amsterdam, the leader in the legal campaign against the death penalty, and Jerome Bruner, who has struggled for equal justice in education for forty years, have written a guide to demystifying legal reasoning. With clarity, wit, and immense learning, they reveal the semantic tricks lawyers and judges sometimes use--consciously and unconsciously--to justify the results they want to reach. --Jack Greenberg, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Book Beyond Legal Reasoning  a Critique of Pure Lawyering

Download or read book Beyond Legal Reasoning a Critique of Pure Lawyering written by Jeffrey Lipshaw and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of learning to ‘think like a lawyer’ is one of the cornerstones of legal education in the United States and beyond. In this book, Jeffrey Lipshaw provides a critique of the traditional views of ‘thinking like a lawyer’ or ‘pure lawyering’ aimed at lawyers, law professors, and students who want to understand lawyering beyond the traditional warrior metaphor. Drawing on his extensive experience at the intersection of real world law and business issues, Professor Lipshaw presents a sophisticated philosophical argument that the "pure lawyering" of traditional legal education is agnostic to either truth or moral value of outcomes. He demonstrates pure lawyering’s potential both for illusions of certainty and cynical instrumentalism, and the consequences of both when lawyers are called on as dealmakers, policymakers, and counsellors. This book offers an avenue for getting beyond (or unlearning) merely how to think like a lawyer. It combines legal theory, philosophy of knowledge, and doctrine with an appreciation of real-life judgment calls that multi-disciplinary lawyers are called upon to make. The book will be of great interest to scholars of legal education, legal language and reasoning as well as professors who teach both doctrine and thinking and writing skills in the first year law school curriculum; and for anyone who is interested in seeking a perspective on ‘thinking like a lawyer’ beyond the litigation arena.

Book Beyond the Law

    Book Details:
  • Author : Emmett Dalton
  • Publisher : Pelican Publishing
  • Release : 2009-10-22
  • ISBN : 9781455601141
  • Pages : 194 pages

Download or read book Beyond the Law written by Emmett Dalton and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Train robbers, horse thieves, murderers. These are only a few of the accusations leveled against the Dalton Gang, the fraternal band of Western lawmen turned outlaws in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Daring in their exploits, the gang members turned their backs on laws they found to be criminally flawed and stole horses, bootlegged whiskey into Indian Territory, and committed the first American train robbery. A rare firsthand account originally published in 1918, this volume details the time when sheriffs were paid for each man they hanged, law enforcement rode under the banner of "Smith & Wesson" rather than "To Serve and Protect," and outlaws ruled the rails.

Book Model Rules of Professional Conduct

    Book Details:
  • Author : American Bar Association. House of Delegates
  • Publisher : American Bar Association
  • Release : 2007
  • ISBN : 9781590318737
  • Pages : 216 pages

Download or read book Model Rules of Professional Conduct written by American Bar Association. House of Delegates and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2007 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Book Beyond the Big Firm

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alan B. Morrison
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2007
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 324 pages

Download or read book Beyond the Big Firm written by Alan B. Morrison and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This succinct paperback will fill a major information void for students and recent graduates who are interested in a legal career outside the typical large, corporate law firm. Beyond the Big Firm offers more than 30 compelling profiles of lawyers who have chosen to follow nontraditional legal careers, in a wide range of subject areas, practice settings, and types of work. This distinctive book explores the many possibilities open to law school graduates interested in "alternative" career choices. the editors of this engaging compilation are long-time public interest lawyers; the actual authors of the profiles are primarily students who capture the personalities of the subjects in a way that is sure to resonate with the audience because they share the same questions about career choices the subjects of the profiles have been out of law school 10-15 years, they represent 18 law schools, and they work in 15 states the lawyers profiled have jobs in governments, nonprofits, and small private firms; both civil and criminal law practice are covered, including prosecutors and defense counsel some of the fields that the lawyers work in include civil rights, civil liberties, immigration, personal injury, and human rights In addition to the fascinating profiles, special features include: a special resources chapter to help students determine and follow their career choice a final chapter with mini-profiles of 3 lawyers who are not practicing law, but for whom their legal training is vital to their work short essays by current and former Stanford Law School deans Larry Kramer and Kathleen Sullivan

Book Law and the Modern Mind

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jerome Frank
  • Publisher : Taylor & Francis
  • Release : 2017-07-12
  • ISBN : 135150956X
  • Pages : 449 pages

Download or read book Law and the Modern Mind written by Jerome Frank and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and the Modern Mind first appeared in 1930 when, in the words of Judge Charles E. Clark, it "fell like a bomb on the legal world." In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the delusion that the law is a bastion of predictable and logical action. Jerome Frank's controversial thesis is that the decisions made by judge and jury are determined to an enormous extent by powerful, concealed, and highly idiosyncratic psychological prejudices that these decision-makers bring to the courtroom.

Book Beyond Legal Positivism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Whitley R. P. Kaufman
  • Publisher : Springer Nature
  • Release : 2023-10-28
  • ISBN : 303143868X
  • Pages : 167 pages

Download or read book Beyond Legal Positivism written by Whitley R. P. Kaufman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legal Positivism has been the dominant school of legal philosophy for much of the last century, despite its many critics. Its central tenet has long been that there is no necessary connection between law and morality. This book provides a broad but clear and jargon-free account of the central objections to the theory and why those objections are sufficient to show that legal positivism is no longer tenable. This includes a broad critique of the purported distinction method of legal positivism, the idea of ‘conceptual analysis,’ as well as a detailed assessment of the most influential of all legal positivist theories, that of H.L.A. Hart. The book also provides a defense of the natural law school, which holds in contrast to legal positivism that the authority of law arises from its intrinsic connection to morality. The author demonstrates that most of the criticism of the natural law school arises from a caricatured account of that doctrine, for instance the idea that it requires substantive theological commitments or particular conceptions of human nature. In contrast, the author presents an account of natural law theory that is grounded in a commitment to moral truth, but not to any theological beliefs. The nature of law can only be understood in terms of its moral function, to provide a clear set of moral rules that are required for a society to function effectively.

Book Equity Stirring

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gary Watt
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Release : 2009-07-17
  • ISBN : 1847315240
  • Pages : 286 pages

Download or read book Equity Stirring written by Gary Watt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-07-17 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Frederick Pollock wrote that 'English-speaking lawyers ...have specialised the name of Equity'. It is typical for legal textbooks on the law of equity to acknowledge the diverse ways in which the word 'equity' is used and then to focus on the legal sense of the word to the exclusion of all others. There may be a professional responsibility on textbook writers to do just that. If so, there is a counterpart responsibility to read the law imaginatively and to read what non-lawyers have said of equity with an open mind. This book is an exploration of the meaning of equity as artists and thinkers have portrayed it within the law and without. Watt finds in law and literature an equity that is necessary to good life and good law but which does not require us to subscribe to a moral or 'natural law' ideal. It is an equity that takes a principled and practical stand against rigid formalism and unthinking routine in law and life, and so provides timely resistance to current forces of extremism and entitlement culture. The project is an educational one in the true etymological sense of leading the reader out into new territory. The book will provide the legal scholar with deep insight into the rhetorical, literary and historical foundations of the idea of equity in law, and it will provide the law student with a cultural history of, and an imaginative introduction to, the technical law of equity and trusts. Scholars and students of such disciplines as literature, classics, history, theology, theatre and rhetoric will discover new insights into the art of equity in the law and beyond. Along the way, Watt offers a new theory on the naming of Dickens' chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce and suggests a new connection between Shakespeare and the origin of equity in modern law. 'This beautiful book, deeply learned in the branch of jurisprudence we call equity and deeply engaged with the western literary tradition, gives new life to equity in the legal sense by connecting it with equity in the larger sense: as it is defined both in ordinary language and experience and by great writers, especially Dickens and Shakespeare. Equity Stirring transforms our sense of what equity is and can be and demonstrates in a new and graceful way the importance of connecting law with other arts of mind and language.' James Boyd White, author of Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force 'Equity Stirring' is a fine example of interdisciplinary legal scholarship at its best. Watt has managed to produce a book that is fresh and innovative, and thoroughly accessible. Deploying a range of familiar, and not so familiar, texts from across the humanities, Watt has presented a fascinating historical and literary commentary on the evolution of modern ideas of justice and equity. Ian Ward, Professor of Law at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. "this is an important, compendious, and thought-provoking work that should be on the shelves of everyone interested in equity studies." Mark Fortier, Law and Literature "there is much of interest to the legal historian...the book's insights and erudition did engage this rather sceptical reader, who would like to believe that equity could achieve justice, but fears rather that it can only be as fair as the court dispensing it." Rosemary Auchmuty, The Journal of Legal History "With luck, Equity Stirring will stir...taxonomic positivists from their culture of entitlement, waking them to the possibility that law and justice do not form the perfect quadration". Nick Piska, Social & Legal Studies "a highly imaginative, original and refreshing foray into the legal and ethical import of concepts too often thought to be difficult, archaic and obscure...Watt gives us a way into the subject which is forceful in its imaginative reach and its ethical import..." David Gurnham, Law, Culture and the Humanities

Book Beyond Legal Reasoning

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeffrey M. Lipshaw
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2017
  • ISBN : 9781315410814
  • Pages : 170 pages

Download or read book Beyond Legal Reasoning written by Jeffrey M. Lipshaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of learning to 'think like a lawyer' is one of the cornerstones of legal education in the United States and beyond. In this book, Jeffrey Lipshaw provides a critique of the traditional views of 'thinking like a lawyer' or 'pure lawyering' aimed at lawyers, law professors, and students who want to understand lawyering beyond the traditional warrior metaphor. Drawing on his extensive experience at the intersection of real world law and business issues, Professor Lipshaw presents a sophisticated philosophical argument that the "pure lawyering" of traditional legal education is agnostic to either truth or moral value of outcomes. He demonstrates pure lawyering's potential both for illusions of certainty and cynical instrumentalism, and the consequences of both when lawyers are called on as dealmakers, policymakers, and counsellors. This book offers an avenue for getting beyond (or unlearning) merely how to think like a lawyer. It combines legal theory, philosophy of knowledge, and doctrine with an appreciation of real-life judgment calls that multi-disciplinary lawyers are called upon to make. The book will be of great interest to scholars of legal education, legal language and reasoning as well as professors who teach both doctrine and thinking and writing skills in the first year law school curriculum; and for anyone who is interested in seeking a perspective on 'thinking like a lawyer' beyond the litigation arena.

Book Beyond Elite Law

    Book Details:
  • Author : Samuel Estreicher
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2016-04-26
  • ISBN : 1107070104
  • Pages : 757 pages

Download or read book Beyond Elite Law written by Samuel Estreicher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 757 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the access to justice crisis facing low- and middle-income Americans and the current reforms to address it.

Book The Legal Mind

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bartosz Broz&775;ek
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2019-11-28
  • ISBN : 1108493254
  • Pages : 191 pages

Download or read book The Legal Mind written by Bartosz Broz&775;ek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do lawyers think? Brożek presents a new perspective on legal thinking as an interplay between intuition, imagination and language.

Book Laying Down the Law

    Book Details:
  • Author : Pierre Schlag
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 1998-10
  • ISBN : 0814780547
  • Pages : 206 pages

Download or read book Laying Down the Law written by Pierre Schlag and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the collected essays here, Schlag established himself as one of the most creative thinkers in the contemporary legal academy. To read them one after another is exhilarating; Schlag's sophistication shines through. In chapter after chapter he tackles the most vexing problems of law and legal thinking, but at the heart of his concern is the questions of normativity and the normative claims made by legal scholars. He revisits legal realism, eenergizes it, and brings readers face-to-face with the central issues confronting law at the end of the 20th century. --Choice, May 1997 Pierre Schlag is the great iconoclast of the American legal academy. Few law professors today are so consistently original, funny, and provocative. But behind his playful manner is a serious goal: bringing the study of law into the late modern/ postmodern age. Reading these essays is like watching a one-man truth squad taking on all of the trends and movements of contemporary jurisprudence. All one can say to the latter is, better take cover. --J. M. Balkin, Lafayette S. Foster Professor, Yale Law School At a time when complaints are heard everywhere about the excesses of lawyers, judges, and law itself, Pierre Schlag focuses attention on the American legal mind and its urge to lay down the law. For Schlag, legalism is a way of thinking that extends far beyond the customary official precincts of the law. His work prompts us to move beyond the facile self- congratulatory self-representations of the law so that we might think critically about its identity, effects, and limitations. In this way, Schlag leads us to rethink the identities and character of moral and political values in contemporary discourse. The book brings into question the dominant normative orientation that shapes so much academic thought in law and in the humanities and social sciences. By pulling the curtain on the rhetorical techniques by which the law represents itself as coherent, rational, and stable, Laying Down the Law discloses the grandiose (and largely futile) attempts of American academics to control social and political meaning by means of scholarly missives.