Author ORCID Identifier

Dan Priel: 0000-0002-8648-5760

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-12-2024

Keywords

legal realism, law and literature, judicial style, Benjamin Cardozo, Karl Llewellyn, Jerome Frank

Abstract

This encyclopedia entry considers the legal realists’ neglected contribution to law and literature. Starting with Cardozo’s essay ‘law and literature’ on the importance of judicial style, it then considers the contributions of the legal realists to the topic, focusing especially on Karl Llewellyn and Jerome Frank. Cardozo and Frank—both judges who were interested in making sure they effectively conveyed their ideas—focused on the style a judge should adopt. By contrast, Llewellyn’s more sociological perspective was concerned with how different periods (as well as different jurisdictions) were dominated by different judicial styles. However, in both cases the question of judicial style also had a political aspect. For Frank, judicial style was important for clearly communicating with the average person subject to law; for Llewellyn, judicial style mattered, because there was a connection between the form of a decision and its substantive quality.

Comments

"To be published under the title “Legal Realism” in The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature (Robert Spoo & Simon Stern eds., 2024)."

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