American Legal Realism Today: An Idiosyncratic Restatement

Abstract

This essay offers my explication of what I understand to be the principle propositions that constitute American legal realism. “Explication,” because I do not intend to defend the propositions, and “my” because the essay is not an exegesis of the work of major legal realists but is instead my personal version of what I take to be those propositions. The core assertion is that a person seeking to understand what the law is in some jurisdiction must engage in an empirical inquiry into social facts. These facts include matters such as the organization of the legal profession, culturally prevalent ideologies about law, and more. American Legal Realism, that is, in my view is fundamentally a sociological account of law.

Keywords: legal realism, jurisprudence, sociology of law