First published in 1973, Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement is a classic account of American Legal Realism and its leading figure. Karl Llewellyn is the best known and most substantial jurist of the group of lawyers known as the American Realists. He made important contributions to legal theory, legal sociology, commercial law, contract law, civil liberties and legal education. This intellectual biography sets Llewellyn in the broad context of the rise of the American Realist Movement and contains an overview of his life before focusing on his most important works, including The Cheyenne Way, The Bramble Bush, The Common Law Tradition and the Uniform Commercial Code. In this second edition the original text is supplemented with a preface by Frederick Schauer and an afterword in which William Twining gives a fascinating account of the making of the book and comments on developments in relevant legal scholarship over the past forty years.

Karl N. Llewellyn was one of the founders and major figures of legal realism, and his many keen insights have a central place in American law and legal understanding. Key to Llewellyn’s thinking was his conception of rules, put forward in his numerous writings and most famously in his often mischaracterized declaration that they are “pretty playthings.” Previously unpublished, The Theory of Rules is the most cogent presentation of his profound and insightful thinking about the life of rules. This book frames the development of Llewellyn’s thinking and describes the difference between what rules literally prescribe and what is actually done, with the gap explained by a complex array of practices, conventions, professional skills, and idiosyncrasies, most of which are devoted to achieving a law’s larger purpose rather than merely following the letter of a particular rule. Edited, annotated, and with an extensive analytic introduction by leading contemporary legal scholar Frederick Schauer, this rediscovered work contains material not found elsewhere in Llewellyn’s writings and will prove a valuable contribution to the existing literature on legal realism.

American legal history is traditionally viewed as a succession of discrete schools of thought or landmark court decisions, not as the work of individuals. Such an approach, however, hardly does justice to the lives of two of the foremost teachers and theorists of American jurisprudence. In Roscoe Pound and Karl Llwellyn: Searcbing for an American Jurisprudence, N. E. H. Hull reconstructs the historical, cultural, and intellectual context of the work of Pound and Llewellyn, bringing to light their private and public relationship as well as the diverse sources - from psychology to plant ecology to Icelandic sagas - they separately drew upon in making their contributions to the American legal tradition.

A wide-ranging and comprehensive survey of modern legal scholarship and the evolution of law in America What do Catharine MacKinnon, the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, and Lani Guinier have in common? All have, in recent years, become flashpoints for different approaches to legal reform. In the last quarter century, the study and practice of law have been profoundly influenced by a number of powerful new movements; academics and activists alike are rethinking the interaction between law and society, focusing more on the tangible effects of law on human lives than on its procedural elements. In this wide-ranging and comprehensive volume, Gary Minda surveys the current state of legal scholarship and activism, providing an indispensable guide to the evolution of law in America.

In The New European Private Law, Martijn W. Hesselink presents a revised and supplemented collection of essays written over the last five years on European private law. He argues that the creation of a common private law in Europe is not merely a matter of rediscovering the old ius commune or of neutrally establishing the present 'common core' which may be codified in a European Civil Code. Rather, it is a matter of making choices, some of which may be highly controversial. In this book he discusses some of the most important choices which will have to be made with regard to culture, principles, politics, models, rights, concepts and structure in the new European private law.

Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical Contexts examines William Twining's principal contributions to law and jurisprudence in the context of three issues which will receive significant scholarly attention over the coming decades. Part I explores human rights, including torture, the role of evidence in human rights cases, the emerging discourse on 'traditional values', the relevance of 'Southern voices' to human rights debates, and the relationship between human rights and peace agreements. Part II assesses the impact of globalization through the lenses of sociology and comparative constitutionalism, and features an analysis of the development of pluralistic ideas of law in the context of privatization. Finally, Part III addresses issues of legal theory, including whether global legal pluralism needs a concept of law, the importance of context in legal interpretation, the effect of increasing digitalization on legal theory, and the utility of feminist and postmodern approaches to globalization and legal theory.

John Henry Schlegel recovers a largely ignored aspect of American Legal Realism, a movement in legal thought in the 1920s and 1930s that sought to bring the modern notion of empirical science into the study and teaching of law. In this book, he explores individual Realist scholars' efforts to challenge the received notion that the study of law was primarily a matter of learning rules and how to manipulate them. He argues that empirical research was integral to Legal Realism, and he explores why this kind of research did not, finally, become a part of American law school curricula. Schlegel reviews the work of several prominent Realists but concentrates on the writings of Walter Wheeler Cook, Underhill Moore, and Charles E. Clark. He reveals how their interest in empirical research was a product of their personal and professional circumstances and demonstrates the influence of John Dewey's ideas on the expression of that interest. According to Schlegel, competing understandings of the role of empirical inquiry contributed to the slow decline of this kind of research by professors of law. Originally published in 1995. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

As telecommunications travel to and from satellites in space, they can be monitored - and often are - by crime prevention authorities and others with enabling technology. Inevitably, the laws of privacy and of space intersect. While privacy and the secrecy of telecommunications are widespread concerns of individuals, controlling telecommunications in order to prevent and fight crime is a pervasive concern of governments. The United States, Germany, and the ECHR have employed fundamentally different methods to approach this apparent dilemma. Using discourse theory as a theoretical framework, the author scrutinises these three systems and the effectiveness of the solutions they have employed. She proposes patterns of reasoning which outline the role that the secrecy of telecommunications plays in constitutional democracies and which help to overcome the strains that new technologies inflict on both the need to protect privacy and on the necessity to control telecommunications.

In the first part of the 20th century, a group of law scholars offered engaging, and occasionally disconcerting, views on the role of judges and the relationship between law and politics in the United States. These legal realists borrowed methods from the social sciences to carefully study the law as experienced by lawyers, judges, and average citizens and promoted a progressive vision for American law and society. Legal realism investigated the nature of legal reasoning, the purpose of law, and the role of judges. The movement asked questions which reshaped the study of jurisprudence and continue to drive lively debates about the law and politics in classrooms, courtrooms, and even the halls of Congress. This thorough analysis provides an introduction to the ideas, context, and leading personalities of legal realism. It helps situate an important movement in legal theory in the context of American politics and political thought and will be of great interest to students of judicial politics, American constitutional development, and political theory.

Perfect for the student new to jurisprudence, this book provides an illuminating introduction to the central questions of legal theory. An experienced teacher of jurisprudence, Professor Wacks' approach is both accessible and entertaining, providing the ideal base for further study.