Casaubon\u27s Ghosts: The Haunting of Legal Scholarship

Much academic work continues to operate within the cramping and pervasive spirit of a black-letter mentality that encourages scholars and jurists to maintain legal study as an inward-looking and self-contained discipline. There is still a marked tendency to treat law as somehow a world of its own that is separate from the society within which it operates and purports to serve. This is a disheartening and disabling state of affairs. Accordingly, this article will offer both a critique of the present situation and suggest an alternative way of proceeding. The writer recommends a shift from philosophy to democracy so that legal academics will be less obsessed with abstraction and formalism and more concerned with relevance and practicality. In contrast to the hubristic and occasionally mystical aspirations of mainstream scholars, it presents a more humble depiction of the worth and efficacy of the jurisprudential and scholarly project in which \u27usefulness\u27 is given pride of place. Of course, these fundamental charges are not applicable to all legal scholars. Many scholars are engaged in work that not only challenges the prevailing paradigm of legal scholarship, but also explores exciting new directions for legal study. It will be part of the essay to acknowledge those contributions

Alien Thoughts: A Comment on Constitutional Scholarship

As the only non-American at the Symposium, I have been placed in an ambivalent position. While my lack of any intimate dealings with the American system of constitutional governance might be thought to weaken some of my comments, it also gives them a certain freshness and detachment that some of the other commentators\u27 observations might lack. Although I am familiar with American jurisprudential materials, I had not previously had any first-hand experience of American scholarly debate. Its intellectual passion and energy cannot be questioned, but its focus and relevance leave room for comment. To be blunt, there is a distressing tendency to treat peculiarly late twentieth- century American jurisprudential difficulties as fundamental issues of universal human significance. Taking advantage of my alien status, I intend to stand outside the ethnocentric American tradition and offer some critical observations on the contemporary jurisprudential enterprise

Inessentially Speaking (Is There Politics After Postmodernism?)

A Review of Making All the Difference by Martha Mino