Details
- Provides a definitive philosophical interpretation of American Legal Realism, one of the most influential schools of modern legal thought, and its relationship with other models, including legal positivism and Critical Legal Studies
- Collects and revises Brian Leiter's most influential essays in one volume, including Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered, and includes postscripts in which Leiter replies to criticisms of his work
- Offers a unique insight into naturalism, a core debate in modern philosophy, and the foreshadowing of the naturalist school in the work of early American legal realists
Brian Leiter is widely recognized as the leading philosophical interpreter of the jurisprudence of American Legal Realism, as well as the most influential proponent of the relevance of the naturalistic turn in philosophy to the problems of legal philosophy. This volume collects newly revised versions of ten of his best-known essays, which set out his reinterpretation of the Legal Realists as prescient philosophical naturalists; critically engage with jurisprudential responses to Legal Realism, from legal positivism to Critical Legal Studies; connect the Realist program to the methodology debate in contemporary jurisprudence; and explore the general implications of a naturalistic world view for problems about the objectivity of law and morality. Leiter has supplied a lengthy new introductory essay, as well as postscripts to several of the essays, in which he responds to challenges to his interpretive and philosophical claims by academic lawyers and philosophers.
This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in jurisprudence, as well as for philosophers concerned with the consequences of naturalism in moral and legal philosophy.
Introduction: From Legal Realism to Naturalized Jurisprudence
Part I: American Legal Realism and Its Critics
1: Rethinking Legal Realism: Toward a Naturalized Jurisprudence
2: Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered
3: Is There an "American" Jurisprudence?
Part II: Naturalizing Jurisprudence
4: Legal Realism, Hard Positivism, and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis
5: Why Quine is Not a Postmodernist
6: Naturalism and Naturalized Jurisprudence
7: Beyond the Hart/Dworkin Debate: The Methodology Problem in Jurisprudence
Part III: Naturalism, Morality, and Objectivity
8: Moral Facts and Best Explanations
9: Objectivity, Morality, and Adjudication
10: Law and Objectivity
Brian Leiter, Hines H. Baker & Thelma Kelley Baker Chair and Director of the Law and Philosophy Program, The University of Texas at Austin
"This book will confirm Brian Leiter's place in the front rank of legal theorists in the world today. Leiter is not just someone who writes well about what others have said. He has carved out a new path in legal theory, and set new standards for critical analysis and insight along the way." - Jeremy Horder, Law Commissioner for England and Wales and Professor of Criminal Law, Oxford University
"Brian Leiter is one of the leading proponents of the use and application of so-called 'naturalistic developments' in contemporary philosophy to central questions in analytic jurisprudence. He is also arguably the leading philosophical interpreter of legal realism. In Naturalizing Jurisprudence, he collects many of his most important essays on these topics, organized by theme, and presents previously unpublished responses to critics. The result is a work that goes well beyond the individual essays to present a trenchant, multi-faceted and mutually-reinforcing set of challenges to core views and methodologies that are prevalent in the field. In an important sense, the book is also agenda setting... This is thus an important book by one of the most influential legal philosophers of our time." -Robin Bradley Kar, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2009
