Nicola Lacey
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199202775
- eISBN:
- 9780191705953
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199202775.003.0014
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This chapter focuses on H. L. A. Hart's views about Ronald Dworkin. In ‘The Nightmare and the Noble Dream’ lecture, published in the Georgia Law Review in 1977, Hart sketched a bold map of the ...
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This chapter focuses on H. L. A. Hart's views about Ronald Dworkin. In ‘The Nightmare and the Noble Dream’ lecture, published in the Georgia Law Review in 1977, Hart sketched a bold map of the American 20th-century jurisprudential scene. American legal theory was, he argued, focussed on adjudication because it was organized around the need to justify the power of judges to strike down democratically validated legislation on constitutional grounds. American legal theorists have reacted to this distinctive constitutional situation, he suggested, in one of two ways: the ‘nightmare’ of total indeterminacy and unconstrained judicial discretion and the ‘noble dream’ of complete legal determinacy. The ‘nightmare’, represented by the Realist jurisprudence of the early part of the 20th century indulges in scepticism about whether judges are bound by law at all in either complex constitutional cases or more generally. By contrast, the American ‘noble dream’ is particularistic and holistic: it finds reasons constraining judges' discretion within the resources of particular legal systems, and it sees law as consisting in more than merely rules, asserting that even when appearances are to the contrary, judges are in fact finding and declaring rather than making law.Less
This chapter focuses on H. L. A. Hart's views about Ronald Dworkin. In ‘The Nightmare and the Noble Dream’ lecture, published in the Georgia Law Review in 1977, Hart sketched a bold map of the American 20th-century jurisprudential scene. American legal theory was, he argued, focussed on adjudication because it was organized around the need to justify the power of judges to strike down democratically validated legislation on constitutional grounds. American legal theorists have reacted to this distinctive constitutional situation, he suggested, in one of two ways: the ‘nightmare’ of total indeterminacy and unconstrained judicial discretion and the ‘noble dream’ of complete legal determinacy. The ‘nightmare’, represented by the Realist jurisprudence of the early part of the 20th century indulges in scepticism about whether judges are bound by law at all in either complex constitutional cases or more generally. By contrast, the American ‘noble dream’ is particularistic and holistic: it finds reasons constraining judges' discretion within the resources of particular legal systems, and it sees law as consisting in more than merely rules, asserting that even when appearances are to the contrary, judges are in fact finding and declaring rather than making law.
James R. Hackney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814737071
- eISBN:
- 9780814745434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814737071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This book invites readers to enter the minds of ten legal experts that in the late 20th century changed the way we understand and use theory in law today. The author spent hours in conversation with ...
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This book invites readers to enter the minds of ten legal experts that in the late 20th century changed the way we understand and use theory in law today. The author spent hours in conversation with legal intellectuals, interviewing them about their early lives as thinkers and scholars, their contributions to American legal theory, and their thoughts regarding some fundamental theoretical questions in legal academe, particularly the law/politics debate. The book “humanizes key ideas in legal theory by placing them in the context of individual biography, historical events, and the sometimes fraught social relationships in the legal academy. ” It “offers new insight into some of the most important debates in legal theory ”.Less
This book invites readers to enter the minds of ten legal experts that in the late 20th century changed the way we understand and use theory in law today. The author spent hours in conversation with legal intellectuals, interviewing them about their early lives as thinkers and scholars, their contributions to American legal theory, and their thoughts regarding some fundamental theoretical questions in legal academe, particularly the law/politics debate. The book “humanizes key ideas in legal theory by placing them in the context of individual biography, historical events, and the sometimes fraught social relationships in the legal academy. ” It “offers new insight into some of the most important debates in legal theory ”.
James R. Hackney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814737071
- eISBN:
- 9780814745434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814737071.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This introductory chapter explains the rationale behind the present volume, which features a collection of interviews that offer a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that ...
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This introductory chapter explains the rationale behind the present volume, which features a collection of interviews that offer a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that animated the author's time at Yale Law School and the legal academy in general during the 1980s, through the lens of some of the era's major figures. This particular decade was chosen because it was an extraordinary period in American legal theory. There were movements formed and intellectual battles waged; there were not only paradigm shifts, but also paradigm proliferation and disintegration. Importantly, this period marked the shift in the legal academy from a largely doctrinally focused enterprise, to an arena in which high-level theoretical and interdisciplinary work thrives. The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of the topics covered during the interviews.Less
This introductory chapter explains the rationale behind the present volume, which features a collection of interviews that offer a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that animated the author's time at Yale Law School and the legal academy in general during the 1980s, through the lens of some of the era's major figures. This particular decade was chosen because it was an extraordinary period in American legal theory. There were movements formed and intellectual battles waged; there were not only paradigm shifts, but also paradigm proliferation and disintegration. Importantly, this period marked the shift in the legal academy from a largely doctrinally focused enterprise, to an arena in which high-level theoretical and interdisciplinary work thrives. The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of the topics covered during the interviews.
