Jurisprudence
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ABA Council on Legal Education ignores critics, offers no substantive responses, and says “full speed ahead” with disrupting legal education at most of the nation’s law schools
I take it that's the upshot of this. The contempt for law schools and legal educators in this memo is palpable, given the devastating (and still unanswered) criticisms of the proposal to double experiential credit hours required for graduation. The two small concessions are: (1) the Council now recommends that 3 of the 12 required…
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“From a Realist Point of View” now delivered to the press and should be out in Spring 2026…
…in the "Oxford Legal Philosophy" series. Here's the official OUP blurb: From A Realist Point of View combines new essays with revised versions of the most important recent work of preeminent legal realist Brian Leiter. This collection offers a systematic and philosophically ambitious account of legal realism and links it, for the first time, to…
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“Against the Metaphysical Turn in Recent American Jurisprudence”
A new paper that may be of interest to those who follow literature in jurisprudence; it will appear in my forthcoming book, From a Realist Point of View (Oxford University Press, 2026), which will include previously published papers (some revised a lot), plus new material (including this chapter), all related to realism in legal and…
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What articles in general jurisprudence from the first quarter-century of the 21st-century should you read?
Readers who want to keep abreast of what's going on in general jurisprudence (questions about law "in general," i.e., the nature of law and legal reasoning, the relationship between law and morality) occasionally ask what articles they should read from the "recent" literature or from the 21st-century. I thought I'd check Google Scholar citations, and…
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Law professors reading Marx
A nice note from a law professor elsewhere: I wanted to pass on a note thanking you for your marvelous book with Jaime Edwards on Marx. The explanation of ideas is lucid and exactly what this non-expert needed as a clear and comprehensive introduction. Like many, I have read at one time the Manifesto and bits…
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The study of philosophy in law schools, and JD/PhDs in philosophy, 2024 edition
For those who might be interested.
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“Law and Historical Materialism”
An interesting symposium at Jack Balkin's blog on a recent paper by legal historian Jeremy Kessler. I found the contributions by Benkler and Syed most interesting, albeit misguided, and I thought Professor Kessler's responses were judicious and sensible. Professor Kessler has done a real service in debunking the CLS critique of Marx, which was never taken…
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Books
Forgive the navel-gazing here, but perhaps some readers will be interested in some of the three books of mine that have appeared this year. (1) Marx, co-authored with Jaime Edwards, has just appeared. Here's what the political philosopher Allen Buchanan (emeritus, Duke University; Laureate Professor, University of Arizona; author of Marx and Justice: The Radical…
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“How to Cabin the Realist Indeterminacy Thesis: On Green, Positivism, and the Sources of Law”
The penulimate version on SSRN, for a volume that OUP will publish on the legal philosophy of Leslie Green. The abstract: Leslie Green raised an important challenge to my reconstruction of the American Legal Realist (ALR) arguments for the indeterminacy of law and legal reasoning: how can those arguments be limited, as I claim, to…
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“Law is a Moral Practice”
I review a recent book of legal philosophy. My review itself has been favorably reviewed by UCLA lawprof Steve Bainbridge on Twitter: "The opening line of @BrianLeiter's review is worth the price of admission. If more law professors wrote with his flair, legal scholarship would be a lot more entertaining. His range from rapier to…
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Law & Philosophy Fellowship at UChicago for 2024-25
The full ad (and application links) are here. Here's the basic description (please note the Workshop theme, it's essential that the candidate be able to contribute to that, even if the dissertation was on a different topic): The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law and Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer,…
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“Politics by Other Means: The Jurisprudence of ‘Common Good Constitutionalism’”
It's now in print at University of Chicago Law Review. I hope this review establishes decisively that there is no "there" there, as it were.
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A student Law Review Comment that solves a standing puzzle in First Amendment doctrine
Richard Stillman, a 3L here (with a PhD in philosophy), has just published a quite ingenious solution to the puzzle of what the Court's test is for nonverbal "expressive" conduct, involving a judicious use of some philosophy of language. Free speech scholars should read this!
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“The Epistemology of the Internet and the Regulation of Speech in America”
When I first posted this paper on SSRN, it generated a lot of interest; for those still interested, it's now out in a symposium issue of Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy.
And the second paragraph?