American Legal Realism

A comprehensive, in-depth discussion of the most influential movement in American legal history, and one which remains more than fifty years later the subject of lively debate, this collection of readings, written largely between 1900 and 1940, includes works from prominent writers on the subject that have never before been generally available. Introduced and edited by noted scholars in the field, the anthology includes such contributors as Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Thayer, Roscoe Pound, John Chipman Gray, Wesley Hohfeld, Karl Llewellyn, Arthur Corbin, Nathan Issacs, Robert Hale, Harold Laski, Max Radin, and others. With concise biographical notes as well as introductions to provide historical context, each selection addresses a different debate involving Legal Realism. Included is a selective bibliography, making the text valuable to a broad range of scholars.

I. Antecedents; Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Common Law (1881); James B. Thayer: "The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law" (1893); Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Path of the Law (1897); Lochner v. New York (1905) (Holmes, J., dissenting); Roscoe Pound: "Liberty of Contract" (1909); John Chipman Gray: The Nature and Sources of the Law (1909); Roscoe Pound: "Law in Books and Law in Action" (1910); Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld: "Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning" (1913); II. The Struggle over the Meaning of "Realism"; Karl N. Llewellyn: "A Realistic Jurisprudence--The Next Step" (1930); Roscoe Pound: "The Call for Realist Jurisprudence" (1931); Karl N. Llewellyn: "Some Realism About Realism--Responding to Dean Pound" (1931); III. Law and the Market; Arthur L. Corbin: "Offer and Acceptance, and Some of the Resulting Legal Relations" (1917); Nathan Isaacs: "The Standardizing of Contracts" (1917); Karl N. Llewellyn: "What Price Contract?--An Essay in Perspective" (1931); L.L. Fuller and William R. Purdue, Jr.: "The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages" (1936-1937); IV. The Critique of the Public/Private Distinction; Robert L. Hale: "Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State" (1923); Morris R. Cohen: "Property and Sovereignty" (1927); Louis L. Jaffe: "Law Making by Private Groups" (1937); M. Witmark & Sons v. Fred Fisher Music Co. (1942) (Frank, J., dissenting); V. Law and Organizational Society; Vegelahn V. Guntner (1896); Harold J. Laski: " The Basis of Vicarious Liability" (1917); International News Service v. Associated Press (1918); John Dewey: "The Historic Background of Corporate Legal Personality" (1926); Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means: The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932); James M. Landis: The Administrative Process (1938); VI. Legal Reasoning; Benjamin M. Cardozo: The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921); Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon (1922); John Dewey: "Logical Method and Law" (1924); Max Radin: The Theory of Judicial Decision: Or How Judges Think" (1925); Herman Oliphant: "A Return to Stare Decisis" (1928); Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr.: "The Judgement Intuitive: The Function of the 'Hunch' in Judicial Decision" (1929); Jerome Frank: Law and the Modern Mind (1930); Felix S. Cohen: "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach" (1935); Karl N. Llewellyn: "Remarks on the Theory of Apellate Decision and the Rules or Canons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed" (1950); VII. Law as Social Science; Louis Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark: Brief Defendant in Error, Muller v. Oregon (1908); Walter W. Cook: "Scientific Method and the Law" (1927); Karl N. Llewellyn and E. Anderson Hoebel: The Cheyenne Way (1941); Underhill Moore and Charles C. Callahan: "Law and Learning Theory: A Study in Legal Control" (1943); VIII. Legal Education and Legal Scholarship; Herman Oliphant, ed.: Summary of Studies in Legal Education (1929); Thurman W. Arnold: "Institute Priests and Yale Observers--A Reply to Dean Goodrich" (1936); Fred Rodell: "Goodbye to Law Reviews" (1936); Notes; Bibliography