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Editor: Christopher J. Robinette

Scordato: After the Realist Revolution: Judicial Lawmaking in an Age of Instrumentalist Common Law Jurisprudence

Marin Roger Scordato has published After the Realist Revolution: Judicial Lawmaking in an Age of Instrumentalist Common Law Jurisprudence with Cambridge University Press. The blurb provides:

After the Realist Revolution extends the existing academic study of American common law into new and previously unexplored areas. Marin Scordato examines the conventional understanding of appellate court lawmaking and the profound change in the common understanding of that activity that occurred during the mid-twentieth century. Scordato argues that this change in the conventional account of common law can be best understood as an authentic paradigm shift, akin to those described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The book also sheds light on the ways in which the current instrumentalist approach to appellate court lawmaking is influenced and, in some respects, compromised by the structures and procedures that were created during the prior formalist era. Thorough and insightful, After the Realist Revolution is an ideal resource for legal scholars and general readers interested in the nature and evolution of American common law.

  • Provides a broad and comprehensive account of the current nature of American common law lawmaking
  • Analyzes the many ways modern instrumentalist legal analysis operates within still existing formalist appellate court structures
  • Offers extensive examples of sophisticated modern instrumentalist legal analysis
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