Overcoming Law

by Posner, Richard A.

• ISBN13: 9780674649262
• ISBN10: 0674649265
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-10-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Legal theory must become more factual and empirical and less conceptual and polemical, Richard Posner argues in this wide-ranging new book. The topics covered include the structure and behavior of the legal profession; constitutional theory; gender, sex, and race theories; interdisciplinary approaches to law; the nature of legal reasoning; and legal pragmatism. Posner analyzes, in witty and passionate prose, schools of thought as different as social constructionism and institutional economics, and scholars and judges as different as Bruce Ackerman, Robert Bork, Ronald Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Rorty, and Patricia Williams. He also engages challenging issues in legal theory that range from the motivations and behavior of judges and the role of rhetoric and analogy in law to the rationale for privacy and blackmail law and the regulation of employment contracts. Although written by a sitting judge, the book does not avoid controversy; it contains frank appraisals of radical feminist and race theories, the behavior of the German and British judiciaries in wartime, and the excesses of social constructionist theories of sexual behavior. Throughout, the book is unified by Posner's distinctive stance, which is pragmatist in philosophy, economic in methodology, and liberal (in the sense of John Stuart Mill's liberalism) in politics. Brilliantly written, eschewing jargon and technicalities, it will make a major contribution to the debate about the role of law in our society.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction Pragmatism, Economics, Liberalism

The Profession

The Material Basis of Jurisprudence

The Triumphs and Travails of Legal Scholarship

What Do Judges Maximize?

The Profession in Crisis: Germany and Britain

Constitutional Theory

Legal Reasoning from the Top Down and from the Bottom Up

Have We Constitutional Theory?

Legal Positivism without Positive Law

What Am I? A Potted Plant?

Bork and Beethoven

Variety and Ideology in Legal Theory

The First Neoconservative

The Left-Wing History of American Legal Thought

Pragmatic or Utopian?

Hegel and Employment at Will

Postmodern Medieval Iceland

Of Gender and Race

Ms. Aristotle

Biology, Economics, and the Radical Feminist Critique of Sex and Reason

Obsessed with Pornography

Nuance, Narrative, and Empathy in Critical Race Theory

Philosophical and Economic Perspectives

So What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?

Ronald Coase and Methodology

The New Institutional Economics Meets Law and Economics

What Are Philosophers Good For?

At the Frontier

Law and Literature Revisited

Rhetoric, Legal Advocacy, and Legal Reasoning

The Legal Protection of the Face We Present to the World

Economics and the Social Construction of Homosexuality Credits

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.