Legal Realism — Law in the Courtroom — KSLU Jurisprudence Notes

Legal Realism — Law in the Courtroom

The Realists pushed scepticism furthest: “the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law” (Holmes, The Path of the Law). Llewellyn distinguished paper rules from real rules; Jerome Frank added fact-scepticism — trial outcomes turn on the fallible finding of facts, witnesses and the judge’s own psychology. Realism’s lasting gift is candour about judicial discretion; its excess is reducing law to prediction, which cannot explain why judges feel bound by rules at all.