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Problems of Jurisprudence'
Problems of Jurisprudence'
Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 25, 2014
Posner's best, hands down. Comprehensive, bracing, confessional.
January 3, 2025
This is not a chapter book with one cohesive argument throughout but a series of essays on jurisprudence. This is probably the best of the Posner anthologies out there and the essays cover Posner’s thoughts on everything from the issue of the textualist’a dogma where he excoriates formalism as superficial, to the analogy between law and science and where that analogy falls apart, to Aristotelian distributive justice, to CRT, to Posner’s positive and normative theories on economics’ place in law.
One of my favorite quotes from the book, and I quote from memory so it may not be verbatim, is “authority in law emanates from a politically accredited source rather than from individuals in whom society reposes and absolute epistemic trust. The trappings of judicial authority—the robes, the solemn rhetoric, the elaborate deference, and so forth—are clues to the nature of this authority. Another clue is the doctrine of precedence itself, which, in a sense, is just a refusal to correct error.” Posner went on to aptly diagnose law’s “feet of clay” problem. The entire book is the Bible on, well, the problems of jurisprudence!
In short, each essay in the book is about so hefty a topic that an entire book could’ve been written about it. Because they are essays, the analysis of the topics certainly could’ve been more rigorous. So, yes, the essays in the book are only a light treatment of these colossal topics. But it is not necessary to be heavy in order to have weight. This is a charmingly light book, with immense weight.
One of my favorite quotes from the book, and I quote from memory so it may not be verbatim, is “authority in law emanates from a politically accredited source rather than from individuals in whom society reposes and absolute epistemic trust. The trappings of judicial authority—the robes, the solemn rhetoric, the elaborate deference, and so forth—are clues to the nature of this authority. Another clue is the doctrine of precedence itself, which, in a sense, is just a refusal to correct error.” Posner went on to aptly diagnose law’s “feet of clay” problem. The entire book is the Bible on, well, the problems of jurisprudence!
In short, each essay in the book is about so hefty a topic that an entire book could’ve been written about it. Because they are essays, the analysis of the topics certainly could’ve been more rigorous. So, yes, the essays in the book are only a light treatment of these colossal topics. But it is not necessary to be heavy in order to have weight. This is a charmingly light book, with immense weight.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews