Formalism and Realism in Fifteenth-century English Law: Bodies Corporate and Bodies Natural
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2012
Editor(s)
Paul Brand & Joshua Getzler
ISBN
9781139224949
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
Thomas Reed Powell, a US law professor, said seventy years ago or more, ‘if you think you can think about a thing, inextricably attached to something else, without thinking of the thing it is attached to, then you have a legal mind’. 1 Though many lawyers claim they have this legal mind as a matter of pride, Professor Powell, I am sure, did not mean this as a compliment. The Legal Realism movement that swept through US law schools in the 1920s and 1930s taught, among other things, that lawyers must see the real attachments between things, attachments that Legal Formalism had been so good at ignoring.
Recommended Citation
David J. Seipp,
Formalism and Realism in Fifteenth-century English Law: Bodies Corporate and Bodies Natural
,
in
Judges and Judging in the History of the Common Law and Civil Law
37
(Paul Brand & Joshua Getzler ed.,
2012).
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139093613.004
