Contribution To Juurisprudence's Theory Of Law And Legal Realism

Contribution to jurisprudence made by the American Realist Movement

Realist jurisprudence is a theory of law and legal reasoning that was introduced in the early twentieth century. The movement first emerged as a cohesive force in the 1920s, but it drew heavily upon prior thinkers. One such thinker was Roscoe Pound, an American legal scholar and educator. Pound was one of the early leaders of the movement for American Legal Realism, which argued for a more pragmatic interpretation of law and a focus on how the legal process actually occurred, as opposed to the legal formalism which prevailed in American jurisprudence at that time.

The most important influencer of the legal realist movement was American Supreme Court Judge, Mr. Justice Holmes.

“Bad men”, Holmes argued in his speech “care little for ethics or lofty conceptions of natural law. For the bad man, "legal duty" signifies only "a prophecy that if he does certain things he will be subjected to disagreeable consequences by way of imprisonment or compulsory payment.” Therefore, in Holmes' mind it was useful to define the law as a prediction of what will bring punishment from a court. (Holmes, O.

An example of this would be majority rulings, whereby judges having been presented the same facts and drawing upon the same precedent come to different conclusions. Realists believe that that judges are not impartial in their decision making. Instead, they are influenced by personal biases and prejudices as well as influenced by testimony they may hear, that will be remembered. There are other factors which are believed to influence judges, such as conscious and subconscious efforts, social class, background, education and politics. Sympathy, or lack thereof, towards parties or lawyers may also factor in their decision making.

Another founder of the U.S realist movement, Karl Llewellyn, similarly believed that “the law is little more than putty in the hands of a judge who is able to shape the outcome of a case based on personal biases”. Llewellyn epitomised the realist view when he wrote that what judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers "do about disputes is, to my mind, the law itself” (Llewellyn,