Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement

by William Twining

Overview

First published in 1973, Karl Llewellyn and the Realist Movement is recognized as a classic account of American Legal Realism and its leading figure. Karl Llewellyn is the best known and most substantial jurist of the variegated group of lawyers known as the American Realists. A man of wide interests and colorful character, he made important contributions to legal theory, legal sociology, commercial law, contract law, civil liberties law, and legal education. This intellectual biography sets Llewellyn in the broad context of the rise of the American Realist Movement and contains a brief overview of Llewellyn's life and character before focusing attention on his most important works, including The Cheyenne Way, The Bramble Bush, The Common Law Tradition, the Uniform Commercial Code, and some significant manuscripts. In this second edition the original text is unchanged and is supplemented with a preface by Frederick Schauer and a lengthy afterword in which William Twining gives a fascinating personal account of the making of the book and comments on developments in relevant legal scholarship over the past forty years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107644786
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/05/2014
Series:	Law in Context
Edition description:	2nd Revised ed.
Pages:	666
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.34(d)

About the Author

William Twining is the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus at University College London and a regular Visiting Professor at the University of Miami School of Law. He was a pupil of Karl Llewellyn in 1957–8 and put Llewellyn's very extensive papers in order after his death in 1962. Twining's recent writings include Rethinking Evidence, 2nd edition (2006), General Jurisprudence (2009) and How to Do Things with Rules, 5th edition (with David Miers, 2010), all published by Cambridge University Press and recognizable as part of the realist tradition.

Table of Contents

Part I. The Rise of the Realist Movement, 1870–1931: Introduction: 1. Langdell's Harvard; 2. Corbin's Yale, 1897–1918; 3. Columbia in the 1920s; 4. The aftermath of the split; 5. The realist controversy, 1930–1; Part II. The Life and Work of Karl Llewellyn: A Case Study: 6. The man; 7. Two early works; 8. The Cheyenne Way; 9. Law in our society; 10. The Common Law Tradition; 11. The genesis of the uniform commercial code; 12. The jurisprudence of the uniform commercial code; 13. Miscellaneous writings; 14. The significance of Llewellyn: an assessment; Part III. Conclusion: 15. The significance of realism.

Editorial Reviews

'In offering in the afterword new and important historical data along with crisp and challengeable claims about the nature of legal theory as it is practised today, Twining has combined the historical with the jurisprudential in a way that is both faithful to the original book and that makes the book and its new afterword required reading for all those who wish to understand Karl Llewellyn, Legal Realism, American legal thought, and the nature of law itself.' Fred Schauer, from the Foreword

From the Publisher