Legal Formalism and Instrumentalism -- A Pathological Study

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1981

ISSN

2768-296X

Publisher

Cornell University

Language

en-US

Abstract

Holmes and those who followed in his wake believed they were rejecting a rigid and impoverished conception of the law (often called "formalism") which had, in their view, adversely affected judicial practice. They spawned a collection of doctrines that Professor Summers dubs "pragmatic instrumentalism"--fittingly so-called both because they viewed the law as an eminently practical instrument and because they were so strongly influenced by the philosophical pragmatists William James and John Dewey.

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