- 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
- A Nation under Lawyers
- Mary Ann Glendon's book is a guided tour through the maze of the late-twentieth-century legal world. Glendon depicts the legal profession as a system in turbulence, where a variety of beliefs and ideals are vying for dominance.
- Paperback 1996
- Overcoming Law
Richard Posner discusses the structure and behavior of the legal profession; constitutional theory; interdisciplinary approaches to law; the nature of legal reasoning; and legal pragmatism. Although written by a sitting judge, the book does not avoid controversy, and contains frank appraisals of feminist and critical race theories, the behavior of the German and British judiciaries in wartime, and the excesses of social constructionist theories of sexual behavior.
Throughout, the book is unified by Posner's distinctive stance, which is pragmatist in philosophy, economic in methodology, and liberal (in the sense of John Stuart Mill's liberalism) in politics. Brilliantly written, eschewing jargon and technicalities, it makes a major contribution to the debate about the role of law in our society.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1996
- The Parisian Order of Barristers and the French Revolution
- This investigation not only revises what historians have long thought of the attitude of barristers toward the French Revolution, but also offers insights into the corporate character of Old Regime society and how the Revolution affected it.
- Hardcover 1987