Legal Canons

by Jack M Balkin, Sanford V Levinson

Overview

In this collection of enlightening essays, legal scholars examine what is—and what ought to be—canonical in the study of law. 

Every discipline has its canon: the set of standard texts, approaches, examples, and stories that form the lingua franca of its practitioners. In Legal Canons, some of today’s finest legal minds seek to map out the legal canon and the way in which law is taught today. 

In order to understand how the twin ideas of canons and canonicity operate in law, each essay focuses on a particular aspect, from contracts and constitutional law to questions of race and gender. The ascendance of law and economics, feminism, critical race theory, and gay legal studies, as well as the increasing influence of both rational-actor methodology and postmodernism, are all scrutinized by the leading scholars in the field.

A timely and comprehensive volume, Legal Canons articulates the need for, and means to, opening the debate on canonicity in legal studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814739464
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	652
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jack M. Balkin is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, and the Founder and Director of Yale’s Information Society Project. He is the author of numerous books, including The Cycles of Constitutional Time, and the editor of What Brown v. Board of Education Should
Have Said. He lives in Branford, Connecticut..

Sanford V. Levinson is W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Regents Chair in Law and Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or co-author of many books, including Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance and Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It).