Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Legal Theory Blog

Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Tamanaha Respons to Leiter

By Lawrence Solum

Check out Unsupported Assertions About the Formalist Age: A Response to Leiter by Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization. Here is a taste:

Most thoughtful scholars who study formalism and realism come away with unresolved questions and an appreciation of the elusiveness that surrounds both. The evidence I uncover in my book increases this uncertainty. When discussing matters that are deeply unsettled, certainty on the part of a theorist perhaps comes across as analytical clarity or solidly grounded knowledge, but it might be a sign that the theorist is missing something, or is distorting matters though oversimplification, or is prematurely closing off the inquiry.

Even readers skeptical of my historical case acknowledge that I have uncovered a trove of information that runs contrary to what we have long assumed about our past. The impulse to hold fast to the familiar conventional story is understandable. We have repeated the story for a very long time; we have built a vast complex of historical narratives and theoretical constructions on top of it. This is hard to give up?and there are no obvious replacements.

And here is a link  to Tamanaha's book.  The book, the review, and the response are all must reading.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 09, 2010 (boomark / email).