On Philosophy in American Law

In recent years there has been tremendous growth of interest in the connections between law and philosophy, but the diversity of approaches that claim to be working at the intersection of philosophy and law might suggest that this area of inquiry is so fractured as to be incoherent. This volume gathers 38 leading scholars working in law and philosophy to provide focused and straightforward articulations of the role that philosophy might play at this juncture of American legal history. The volume marks the 75th anniversary of Karl Llewellyn's essay "On Philosophy in American Law," in which he rehearsed the broad development of American jurisprudence, diagnosed its contemporary failings, and then charted a productive path opened by the variegated scholarship that claimed to initiate a realistic approach to law and legal theory. The essays are written in the spirit of Llewellyn's article: they are succinct and direct arguments about the potential for bringing law and philosophy together.

Francis J. Mootz III is the author of Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory (2006) and Law, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics (to be published in 2010). He is editor of Gadamer and Law (2007) and Nietzsche and Law (2008, with Peter Goodrich). He is also the author of a law casebook, Commercial Transactions: Sales, Leases, and Computer Information (2nd ed., 2008, with David Frisch and Peter Alces). He has published numerous articles in a variety of journals, including law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. Professor Mootz is a regular presenter at academic symposia focusing on issues of legal theory. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the interdisciplinary journals Law, Culture and the Humanities, and International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and is a member of the Organizing Committee of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities. He is an active member of the Association of American Law Schools, the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, the Law and Society Association, the Society for Ricoeur Studies, and the Rhetoric Society of America.