Talk:Legal realism

Why no critical section?

The article just assumes the attack of the "Legal Realists" on traditional ideas of law and justice, based upon private property, to be correct. Why is there no critical section of the article? For example including thinkers who deny that private property is "coercive" or a "power relationship"?176.253.0.2 (talk) 12:30, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Scandinavian legal realism?
Doesn't this article adopt a very US POV? Hjorten 20:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Just Plain Bad
This is really a terrible summary of legal realism. The Red Tie Rule is closer to a parody than an illustrative example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.11.164 (talk) 02:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed -- Just removed the red tie example
That was the worst caricature of legal realism I've ever read. Yikes! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.220.104.228 (talk) 18:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Come on, is there any other kind of legal realism?
This article is a mess. I've read extensively in comparative law and in that field the vast majority of scholars agree that the only "real" legal realism was that in the United States. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:10, 30 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Legal realism was at least influential enough in Scandinavia to be singled out in a B.A. level course on "Retslære" (lit. "Legal learning") on Aarhus University by Prof., Dr.jur. Sten Schaumburg-Müller in 2011 (available on YouTube but only in Danish). Here it's mentioned as being US and Scandinavian. Danish legal scholar Alf Ross is sometimes included in a Swedish legal realist tradition known as the "Uppsala School", which is at least regionally recognised to the extent that it made it into this Danish encyclopaedia. Ross was influenced by his contact with Hans Kelsen stemming from a 1926 study tour of Europe. However, I've also seen Ross classed as a legal positivist, so there may be differences on that point - and I'm no legal scholar. Whether this should all be disregarded as a Nordic regional quirk, I don't know.
 * Mojowiha (talk) 14:15, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion
Realistic School should be merged here. The two are overlapped and Realistic School can be a section of this article.PinoyingNeighbor (talk) 06:48, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

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Relation to natural and social scientific research
I don't know anything about legal realism, so didn't want to edit the page, but did notice the statement "Legal realists believe that legal science should only investigate law with the value-free methods of natural sciences," and this misrepresents the nature of investigation in the natural sciences, as they aren't value-free. Also, given that law is a human construct, seems to me that if legal researchers want to emulate some kind of scientific research, it would be research in the social sciences, not research in the natural sciences, consistent with a later statement that "legal realists turned to the ideas of the social sciences." Similarly, "jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural science, i.e., rely on empirical evidence" might be changed to "jurisprudence should emulate scientific methods, i.e., rely on empirical evidence," since both the social sciences and natural sciences rely on empirical evidence. I can't speak to legal realism, but if anyone needs more info about natural and social scientific research, I can try to help in discussion here. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:02, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Original research?
I can't find any reference to this paragraph in any of the inline references - the [6] here references Hart himself, rather than somebody else claiming that he had misunderstood legal realism. These are quite significant claims to be making without scholarly evidence in my opinion, and the whole paragraph reads like original research.

"Realism was treated as a conceptual claim for much of the late 20th century due to H. L. A. Hart's misunderstanding of the theory.[6] Hart was an analytical legal philosopher who was interested in the conceptual analysis of concepts such as 'law.' This entailed identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of the concept of 'law.' When realists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. pointed out that individuals embroiled in the legal system generally wanted to know what was going to happen, Hart assumed that they were offering the necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of the concept of 'law.' Nowadays, legal theorists tend to recognize that the realists and the conceptual lawyers were interested in different questions. Realists are interested in methods of predicting judges' decisions with more accuracy, whereas conceptual lawyers are interested in the correct use of legal concepts."

I have added an "Original research" template to the section.

N3hima (talk) 10:47, 29 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I didn't write the section and I think that the tag "Original research" is appropriate until references are provided. I think, however, that Brian Leiter, "Naturalizing Jurisrudence", could be quoted to support the text, which is of good quality. I'll check later and see if I can find some sources on this. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 10:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)