NCJ Number
116130
Journal
Michigan Law Review Volume: 87 Issue: 3 Dated: (December 1988) Pages: 724-731
Date Published
1988
Length
8 pages
Annotation
The approach to legal scholarship that is presented by Richard Posner in 'The Jurisprudence of Skepticism' and that can be called 'Practical Legal Studies' (PLS) can be viewed as a liberal/moderate/conservative response to the radicalism of 'Critical Legal Studies' (CLS).
Abstract
PLS expressly abandons the goals of certainty, formal accuracy, and formal legitimacy in legal decisionmaking in favor of more fluid techniques or reasoning and argumentation. The basic questions that PLS confronts are how judges decide cases and how judges should decide cases. PLS has moved to informal legal reasoning as a description of adjudication and as a source of legitimacy. The term 'practical' means that the view espoused conforms to the prevailing political ideology, although subscribing to this ideology does not necessarily mean supporting the status quo. Thus, at a general level it is not easy to distinguish Critical legal decisionmaking from Practical legal decisionmaking. However, critical scholarship proceeds from a radically different political perspective, with a sense that legal conventions are problematic. The fundamental political difference between CLS and PLS explains the wide range of political and intellectual beliefs represented in the PLS movement. Many PLS scholars defy characterization as liberal or conservative, but all lack an association with the CLS movement and its extensive critique of the prevailing legal order. 28 footnotes.