Research Catalog

Title

Overcoming law / Richard A. Posner.

Author

Posner, Richard A.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 597 pages; 25 cm

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 lucid 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."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Jurisprudence
• Law > Methodology

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Pragmatism, Economics, Liberalism -- Pt. 1. The Profession -- 1. The Material Basis of Jurisprudence -- 2. The Triumphs and Travails of Legal Scholarship -- 3. What Do Judges Maximize? -- 4. The Profession in Crisis: Germany and Britain -- Pt. 2. Constitutional Theory -- 5. Legal Reasoning from the Top Down and from the Bottom Up -- 6. Have We Constitutional Theory? -- 7. Legal Positivism without Positive Law -- 8. What Am I? A Potted Plant? -- 9. Bork and Beethoven -- Pt. 3. Variety and Ideology in Legal Theory -- 10. The First Neoconservative -- 11. The Left-Wing History of American Legal Thought -- 12. Pragmatic or Utopian? -- 13. Hegel and Employment at Will -- 14. Postmodern Medieval Iceland -- Pt. 4. Of Gender and Race -- 15. Ms. Aristotle -- 16. Biology, Economics, and the Radical Feminist Critique of Sex and Reason -- 17. Obsessed with Pornography -- 18. Nuance, Narrative, and Empathy in Critical Race Theory -- Pt. 5. Philosophical and Economic Perspectives -- 19. So What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law? -- 20. Ronald Coase and Methodology -- 21. The New Institutional Economics Meets Law and Economics -- 22. What Are Philosophers Good For? -- Pt. 6. At the Frontier -- 23. Law and Literature Revisited -- 24. Rhetoric, Legal Advocacy, and Legal Reasoning -- 25. The Legal Protection of the Face We Present to the World -- 26. Economics and the Social Construction of Homosexuality.

ISBN

0674649257 (acid-free paper)

LCCN

94012753

OCLC

• 30547689
• ocm30547689

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries