- A Critique of Adjudication [fin de siècle]
- A major statement from one of the foremost legal theorists of our time, this book offers both a penetrating look into the political nature of legal decisionmaking, and a sustained attempt at integrating the American approach to law with the Continental tradition in social theory, philosophy, and psychology. At the center of this work is the question of how politics affects judicial activity--and how, in turn, lawmaking by judges affects American politics.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998
- The Federal Courts
- The federal courts are the world's most powerful judiciary and a vital element of the American political system. In recent decades, these courts have experienced unprecedented growth in caseload and personnel. Many judges and lawyers believe that a "crisis in quantity" is imperiling the ability of the federal judiciary to perform its historic function of administering justice fairly and expeditiously. Drawing on economic and political theory as well as on legal analysis and his own extensive judicial experience, Judge Richard Posner sketches the history of the federal courts, describes the contemporary institution, appraises the concerns that have been expressed with the courts' performance, and presents a variety of proposals for both short-term and fundamental reform. In contrast to some of the direr prophecies of observers of the federal courts, Posner emphasizes the success of these courts in adapting to steep caseload growth with minimal sacrifice in quality.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1999
- Freedom's Law
- Ronald Dworkin argues that Americans have been systematically misled about what their Constitution is and how judges interpret it. In spirited and illuminating discussions of both recent constitutional cases and general constitutional principles, Ronald Dworkin argues that a distinctly American version of government based on the moral reading of the Constitution is in fact the best account of what democracy really is.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997
- Frontiers of Legal Theory
- The most exciting development in legal thinking since World War II has been the growth of interdisciplinary legal studies. Judge Richard Posner has been a leader in this movement, and his new book explores its rapidly expanding frontier.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2004
- The Gift of Science
- Moving from the scientific revolution to the nineteenth-century rise of legal codes, Berkowitz tells the story of how lawyers and philosophers invented legal science to preserve law's claim to moral authority. The "gift" of science, however, proved bittersweet. Instead of strengthening the bond between law and justice, the subordination of law to science transformed law from an ethical order into a tool for social and economic ends.
- Hardcover 2005
- How Judges Think
- A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases.
- Hardcover 2008
- The Juridical Unconscious
This book offers a groundbreaking account of the surprising interaction between trauma and justice. Moving from texts by Arendt, Benjamin, Freud, Zola, and Tolstoy to the Dreyfus and Nuremberg trials, as well as the trials of O. J. Simpson and Adolf Eichmann, Shoshana Felman argues that the adjudication of collective traumas in the twentieth century transformed both culture and law. This transformation took place through legal cases that put history itself on trial, and that provided a stage for the expression of the persecuted--the historically "expressionless."
- Paperback 2002 / Hardcover 2002
- Justice in Robes
- How should a judge's moral convictions bear on his judgments about what the law is? In his new book, Ronald Dworkin argues that this question is much more complex than it has often been taken to be and charts a variety of dimensions in which law and morals are undoubtedly interwoven. Dworkin's new collection of essays and original chapters is a model of lucid, logical, and impassioned reasoning that will advance the crucially important debate about the roles of justice in law.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
- Law and Judicial Duty
- Hamburger reveals the familiar notion of judicial review to be largely an illusion produced by modern assumptions, and he shows that what today is called “judicial review” was once understood more simply as part of the duty of judges to decide in accord with the law of the land.
- Hardcover 2008
- Law’s Quandary
- This lively book reassesses a century of jurisprudential thought from a fresh perspective, and points to a malaise that currently afflicts not only legal theory but law in general. Smith argues that our legal vocabulary and methods of reasoning presuppose classical ontological commitments that were explicitly articulated by thinkers from Aquinas to Coke to Blackstone, and even by Joseph Story. But these commitments are out of sync with the world view that prevails today in academic and professional thinking. So our law-talk thus degenerates into "just words"--or a kind of nonsense.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007