The state of legal scholarship today: A comment on schlag

Georgetown Law Journal

Volumn 97, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 845-856

  Posner, Richard A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 64949146755     PISSN: 00168092     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. This is an invited Comment on Pierre Schlag, Spam Jurisprudence, Air Law, and the Rank Anxiety of Nothing Happening (A Report on the State of the Art), 97 GEO. L. J. 803 (2009).
2. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET act 3, sc. 1, 11.172-73 (Jack Randall Crawford ed., 1917).
3. Schlag, supra note 1, at 803 n.*.
4. Id. at 813.
5. Id. at 815. This is what I have called "the imperative duty of judges to decide": The judge cannot throw up his hands, or stew indefinitely, just because he is confronted with a case in which the orthodox materials of judicial decision making, honestly deployed, will not produce any acceptable result. They may not produce any result, as in a case in which two canons of statutory construction are applicable and they point to different results.⋯ [A] case cannot be left undecided just because it is a toss-up from a legalistic standpoint. A convicted defendant cannot be left unsentenced. RICHARD A. POSNER, HOW JUDGES THINK 79-80 (2008) (emphasis in original).
6. Schlag, supra note 1, at 816.
7. This is the major thrust of How JUDGES THINK, supra note 5.
8. Schlag, supra note 1, at 819.
9. Id. at 817.
10. See generally THOMAS S. KUHN, THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS (3d ed.1996).
11. See John H. Schlegel, Langdell's Legacy or, The Case of the Empty Envelope, 36 STAN. L. REV. 1517, 1529-30 (1984), quoted in Schlag, supra note 1, at 822 n.45.
12. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, The Second Coming, in THE COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS 158, 159 (Wordsworth Editions 2000).
13. ALFRED TENNYSON, The Kraken, in THE POEMS OF ALFRED TENNYSON 58, 58 (Ernest Rhys ed., 1907) (1877).
14. Schlag, supra note 1, at 806 n.15.
15. See Kuhn, supra note 10, at 5-6.
16. Schlag, supra note 1, at 821.
17. Id. at 827.
18. See generally CLEANTH BROOKS, THE WELL WROUGHT URN: STUDIES IN THE STRUCTURE OF POETRY (1947).
19. Id. at 10-19.
20. RAMIE TARGOFF, JOHN DONNE, BODY AND SOUL (2008).
21. See id. passim.
22. This development was well under way by 1969, though just beginning then in law. See JOHN GROSS, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MAN OF LETTERS: A STUDY OF THE IDIOSYNCRATIC AND THE HUMANE IN MODERN LITERATURE 299 (1969).
23. Schlag, supra note 1, at 805.
24. Id. at 822-23.
25. Id. at 821-23.
26. Id. at 804. I thought critical legal studies had died and been buried. Schlag implies that it has been resurrected.
27. Id.
28. See POSNER, supra note 5, ch. 1 ("Nine Theories of Judicial Behavior") and references cited there.
29. See generally Mark A. Hall & Ronald F. Wright, Systematic Content Analysis of Judicial Opinions, 96 CAL. L. REV. 63 (2008);
30. William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, Rational Judicial Behavior: A Statistical Study (Nov. 16, 2008) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author).
31. See generally BEHAVIORAL LAW AND ECONOMICS (Cass R. Sunstein ed., 2000);
32. Cass R. SUN STEIN ET AL., PUNITIVE DAMAGES: How JURIES DECIDE (2005);
33. Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Cognitive Errors, Individual Differences, and Paternalism, 73 U. CHI. L. REV. 207 (2006).
34. It has its own journal, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. See the publisher's home page, www.blackwellpubushing.com/journal.asp?ref=1740- 1453&site=1 (last visited Nov. 12, 2008), for information about the journal.
35. United States v. Chambers, 473 F.3d 724 (7th Cir. 2007), cert, granted, 128 S. Ct. 2046 (2008).
36. See POSNER, supra note 5, at 151-53;
37. see also RICHARD A. POSNER, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW § 8.6, at 262-455 (7th ed. 2007).
38. See, e.g., RICHARD A. POSNER, NOT A SUICIDE PACT: THE CONSTITUTION IN A TIME OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY (2006) and references cited there.
39. See, e.g., LAWRENCE LESSIG, THE FUTURE OF IDEAS: THE FATE OF THE COMMONS IN A CONNECTED WORLD (2004).
40. See, e.g., RICHARD A. POSNER, CATASTROPHE: RISK AND RESPONSE (2004).
41. See the forthcoming third edition of my book, RICHARD A. POSNER, LAW AND LITERATURE (1988).
42. See POSNER, supra note 5, ch. 11 ("Comprehensive Constitutional Theories").
43. Schlag, supra note 1, at 822.
44. Id. at 809-10.
45. Id. at 829.