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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy pp 1–8Cite as

Contemporary Legal Realism

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Introduction

Almost a century after the heydays of American legal realism, its legacy is still unclear. Part of the puzzle – the dispute as to whether the so-called legal realist revolt against formalism indeed transformed American legal discourse or simply emphasized and repackaged preexisting strands of thought – is beyond the scope of this entry (compare, e.g., Kronman 1998 to Tamanaha 2010). Rather than delving into this historical debate, the task here is to identify contemporary legal realist views; in fact, it is even narrower than that. This entry does not discuss the variety of post-realist schools – notably law and economics and critical legal studies – that either claim to be or are portrayed as descendants of legal realism. Because many contemporary American schools of legal thought are (or should be) indebted to the legal realists, there is little point in trying to cover them all in one short entry.

The focus of this entry is thus on three particularly interesting...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Hanoch Dagan

Authors
  1. Hanoch Dagan
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Correspondence to Hanoch Dagan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Patricia Mindus Ph.D

  2. Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Sebastian Andres Reyes Molina

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Dagan, H. (2017). Contemporary Legal Realism. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_107-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_107-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6730-0

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