Further Reflections on Post-Realist Legal Scholarship and Teaching: A Brief Response to Professor Scordato

Abstract

In this article, the author scrutinizes Professor Marin Roger Scordato’s recommendations regarding legal scholarship and teaching in the post-realist era. The author takes issue with some of Scordato’s recommendations on how to resolve the tension between instrumentalism and formalist legal discourse. Rather than devoting the bulk of their instruction to conventional doctrines and formalist analysis, the author suggests that instrumentalist law professors give greater relative emphasis to instrumentalist critiques.

Keywords: descriptive legal scholarship, instrumentalism, formalism, legal teaching, law professors