{"product_id":"the-problems-of-jurisprudence","title":"The Problems of Jurisprudence","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this book  one of our countrys most distinguished scholar-judges shares with us his vision of the law. For the past two thousand years  the philosophy of law has been dominated by two rival doctrines. One contends that law is more than politics and yields  in the hands of skillful judges  correct answers to even the most difficult legal questions; the other contends that law is politics through and through and that judges wield essentially arbitrary powers. Rejecting these doctrines as too metaphysical in the first instance and too nihilistic in the second  Richard Posner argues for a pragmatic jurisprudence  one that eschews formalism in favor of the factual and the empirical. Laws  he argues  are not abstract  sacred entities  but socially determined goads for shaping behavior to conform with societys values. Examining how judges go about making difficult decisions  Posner argues that they cannot rely on either logic or science  but must fall back on a grab bag of informal methods of reasoning that owe less than one might think to legal training and experience. Indeed  he reminds us  the greatest figures in American law have transcended the traditional conceptions of the lawyers craft. Robert Jackson did not attend law school and Benjamin Cardozo left before getting a degree. Holmes was neither the most successful of lawyers nor the most lawyerly of judges. Citing these examples  Posner makes a plea for a law that frees itself from excessive insularity and takes all knowledge  practical and theoretical  as grist for its mill. The pragmatism that Posner espouses implies looking at problems concretely  experimentally  without illusions  with an emphasis on keeping diverse paths of inquiry open  and  above all  with the insistence that social thought and action be evaluated as instruments to desired human goals rather than as ends in themselves. In making his arguments  he discusses notable figures in jurisprudence from Antigonc to Ronald Dworkin as well as recent movements ranging from law and economics to civic republicanism  and feminism to libertarianism. All are subjected to Posners stringent analysis in a fresh and candid examination of some of the deepest problems presented by the enterprise of law.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44974599110709,"sku":"ByrdShop_067470875X","price":225.17,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674708754.jpg?v=1770666029","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-problems-of-jurisprudence","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}