In recent years, there has been tremendous growth of interest in the connections
between law and philosophy, but the diversity of approaches that claim to be working
at the intersection of these disciplines might suggest that this area of inquiry is so
fractured as to be incoherent. This volume gathers leading scholars to provide focused
and straightforward articulations of the role that philosophy might play at this juncture
of the history of American legal thought.
The volume marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Karl Llewellyn’s essay “On Philosophy
in American Law” in which he rehearsed the broad development of American
jurisprudence, diagnosed its contemporary failings, and then charted a productive path
opened by the variegated scholarship that claimed to initiate a realistic approach to
law and legal theory. The essays are written in the spirit of Llewellyn’s article: they are
succinct and direct arguments about the potential for bringing law and philosophy
together.