From a Realist Point of View

Author: Brian Leiter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197749821
Published In: June 2026
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Contents

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From A Realist Point of View combines new essays with revised versions of the most important recent work of preeminent legal realist Brian Leiter. This collection offers a systematic and philosophically ambitious account of legal realism and links it, for the first time, to political realism. Throughout, Leiter engages with various legal traditions (American, Scandinavian, Italian, French) and realist thinkers, from Thucydides to Nietzsche.

Part I, "Realism about Law and Legal Reasoning," examines the problem of theoretical disagreement, the relation between legal positivism and realism, and the realist theory of precedent, concluding with a penetrating critique of the recent metaphysical inflation of general jurisprudence in America. Part II, "Realism about Courts, Politics and Morality," brings the realistic perspective to bear on courts and democracy, as well as on morality (understood as a culturally variably human artifact) and moral philosophy (treated as ethnographic data, irrelevant to political practice). It concludes with case studies of two realist political thinkers, Marx and Foucault.

1. What is Realism?

Part I: Realism about Law and Legal Reasoning

2. Explaining Theoretical Disagreement

3. Theoretical Disagreements in Law: Another Look

4. Postscript on Theoretical Disagreements

5. Legal Positivism as a Realist Theory of Law

6. Realism about Precedent

7. How to Cabin the Realist Indeterminacy Thesis

8. The Demarcation Problem in Jurisprudence: A New Case for Skepticism

9. Against the Metaphysical Turn in Recent American Jurisprudence

Part II: Realism about Courts, Politics, and Morality

10. Legal Formalism and Legal Realism: What is the Issue?