This anthology presents, for the first time, full texts of the twenty most important works of American legal thought since 1890. Drawing on a course the editors teach at Harvard Law School, the book traces the rise and evolution of a distinctly American form of legal reasoning. These are the articles that have made these authors--from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to Ronald Coase, from Ronald Dworkin to Catherine MacKinnon--among the most recognized names in American legal history. These authors proposed answers to the classic question: "What does it mean to think like a lawyer--an American lawyer?" Their answers differed, but taken together they form a powerful brief for the existence of a distinct and powerful style of reasoning--and of rulership. The legal mind is as often critical as constructive, however, and these texts form a canon of critical thinking, a toolbox for resisting and unravelling the arguments of the best legal minds. Each article is preceded by a short introduction highlighting the article's main ideas and situating it in the context of its author's broader intellectual projects, the scholarly debates of his or her time, and the reception the article received. Law students and their teachers will benefit from seeing these classic writings, in full, in the context of their original development. For lawyers, the collection will take them back to their best days in law school. All readers will be struck by the richness, the subtlety, and the sophistication with which so many of what have become the clichés of everyday legal argument were originally formulated.

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.

The intellectual development of American legal thought has progressed remarkably quickly form the nation's founding through today. Stephen Feldman traces this development through the lens of broader intellectual movements and in this work applies the concepts of premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism to legal thought, using examples or significant cases from Supreme Court history. Comprehensive and accessible, this single volume provides an overview of the evolution of American legal thought up to the present.

This book focuses on the interaction and mutual influences between the East and the West in terms of their legal systems and practices. In this regard, it highlights Professor Herbert H.P. Ma’s achievements and his efforts to bring Eastern and Western legal concepts and systems closer together. The book shows that, while there have been convergences between different legal regimes in many fields of law, diverse legal practices and approaches rooted in differing cultural, social, political and philosophical backgrounds do remain, and that these differences are not necessarily negative elements in the contemporary legal order. By examining different levels of the legal order, including domestic, regional and multilateral, it goes on to argue that identifying these diversities and addressing the interactions and mutual influences between different regimes is a worthwhile undertaking, not only in terms of mutual enrichment, but also with regard to intensifying the degree of desirable coordination between different legal systems. All chapters were written by leading experts, practitioners and scholars from different jurisdictions with expertise in various fields of law and different levels of the legal order, and discuss a number of issues with particular focus on either “one-way” or mutual influences between the Eastern and the Western legal systems, practices and philosophies.

From the ancient beginnings of Western legal tradition, law has been conceived as traversed by a fundamental tension between power (will) and reason. This volume examines the tension between these two poles, 'ratio and voluntas' in modern law. Part I focuses on three instructive phases in the history of the law's ratio. Part II examines the way legal scholarship, especially doctrinal research (legal dogmatics), can and should contribute to the law's coherence. Part III explores the role of constitutional law in managing the tension between law's voluntas and ratio. The final chapter discusses the implications the growth of transnational law may have on the relationship between ratio and voluntas. The study builds on the views of the distinctive features of the ideal-typical mature modern legal system as presented in the author's previous work, Critical Legal Positivism (Ashgate 2002).

This book deals with the most fundamental problem in criminal law, the way in which free will and determinism relate to criminal responsibility.

In the Shadow of Vitoria: A History of International Law in Spain (1770-1953) offers the first comprehensive treatment of the intellectual evolution of international law in Spain from the late 18th century to the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral recounts the history of the two ‘renaissances’ of Francisco de Vitoria and the Spanish Classics of International Law and contextualizes the ideological glorification of the Salamanca School by Franco’s international lawyers. Historical excursuses on the intellectual evolution of international law in the US and the UK complement the neglected history of international law in Spain from the first empire in history on which the sun never set to a diminished and fascistized national-Catholicist state.

A searching dialogue between two leading legal scholars exploring the place of law in global affairs. The modern world is legalized: legal language, institutions, and professionals are everywhere. But what is law’s power in global life? What does all this legality have to do with hegemony, with hierarchy and inequality, and with the diversity of human experience? What is its history and how does that history matter in world affairs? Above all, what does it mean to think “critically” about law and global affairs? In this poignant and iconoclastic book, two leading scholars take us to the heart of the matter, examining law’s relationship with history, power, and political economy. David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi have often inspired each other and are both considered “critical” voices in international law, but they have never explored their similarities and differences as deeply as they do here. Of Law and the World takes the form of a conversation, as the authors reflect on the study of international law, the motivations underlying their research, and the payoffs and limitations of their investigations into law’s role in global affairs. They revisit and renew debates about the past and future of the many legalities that shape our world. Erudite, open-minded, and informed by decades of experience and observation, Of Law and the World is an unflinchingly honest confrontation with humanity’s struggle to live together.

In Law in American History, Volume III: 1930-2000, the eminent legal scholar G. Edward White concludes his sweeping history of law in America, from the colonial era to the near-present. Picking up where his previous volume left off, at the end of the 1920s, White turns his attention to modern developments in both public and private law. One of his findings is that despite the massive changes in American society since the New Deal, some of the landmark constitutional decisions from that period remain salient today. An illustration is the Court's sweeping interpretation of the reach of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn (1942), a decision that figured prominently in the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. In these formative years of modern American jurisprudence, courts responded to, and affected, the emerging role of the state and federal governments as regulatory and redistributive institutions and the growing participation of the United States in world affairs. They extended their reach into domains they had mostly ignored: foreign policy, executive power, criminal procedure, and the rights of speech, sexuality, and voting. Today, the United States continues to grapple with changing legal issues in each of those domains. Law in American History, Volume III provides an authoritative introduction to how modern American jurisprudence emerged and evolved of the course of the twentieth century, and the impact of law on every major feature of American life in that century. White's two preceding volumes and this one constitute a definitive treatment of the role of law in American history.