A principios de la década de los años treinta surgió en Estados Unidos la corriente antiformalista del realismo jurídico, movimiento que construyó sus aportes a partir de una serie de críticas al formalismo que había surgido a ambos lados del Atlántico a finales del siglo XIX. Dentro de la corriente antiformalista, los realistas norteamericanos se erigieron como una nueva generación especialmente preocupada por la relación entre sociedad y derecho y por la forma como se construían las decisiones judiciales a partir de valoraciones de utilidad social y política pública. En este contexto se encargaron de desarrollar la intuición antiformalista frente a la indeterminación del derecho, según la cual resulta complejo predecir la decisión judicial a partir de normas jurídicas positivas, pues la labor de un juez también se encuentra determinada por consideraciones psicológicas o sociológicas que no son capturadas por las normas. La tesis fuerte de la indeterminación fue duramente resistida por otros antiformalistas estadounidenses que atacaron al realismo. Uno de estos ataques provino del prestigioso jurista y decano de la Escuela de Leyes de la Universidad de Harvard, Roscoe Pound. Este último, representante de la jurisprudencia sociológica, atacó el escepticismo de los realistas. Ello produjo una respuesta del representante más reputado del realismo jurídico, Karl Llewellyn, quien trató de resistir los ataques de Pound mostrando que los realistas de los años treinta eran herederos del antiformalismo de los viejos representantes de la jurisprudencia sociológica como lo era el propio Pound. No obstante la prudencia de Llewellyn, el debate marcó un quiebre general entre los "viejos" y los "nuevos" antiformalistas estadounidenses: los juristas sociológicos y los realistas.

"Based on the journals of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley."

American legal history is traditionally viewed as a succession of discrete schools of thought or landmark court decisions, not as the work of individuals. Such an approach, however, hardly does justice to the lives of two of the foremost teachers and theorists of American jurisprudence. In Roscoe Pound and Karl Llwellyn: Searcbing for an American Jurisprudence, N. E. H. Hull reconstructs the historical, cultural, and intellectual context of the work of Pound and Llewellyn, bringing to light their private and public relationship as well as the diverse sources - from psychology to plant ecology to Icelandic sagas - they separately drew upon in making their contributions to the American legal tradition.

Roscoe Pound, former dean of Harvard Law School, delivered a series of lectures at the University of Calcutta in 1948. In these lectures, he criticized virtually every modern mode of interpreting the law because he believed the administration of justice had lost its grounding and recourse to enduring ideals. Now published in the U.S. for the first time, Pound's lectures are collected in Liberty Fund's The Ideal Element in Law, Pound's most important contribution to the relationship between law and liberty. The Ideal Element in Law was a radical book for its time and is just as meaningful today as when Pound's lectures were first delivered. Pound's view of the welfare state as a means of expanding government power over the individual speaks to the front-page issues of the new millennium as clearly as it did to America in the mid-twentieth century. Pound argues that the theme of justice grounded in enduring ideals is critical for America. He views American courts as relying on sociological theories, political ends, or other objectives, and in so doing, divorcing the practice of law from the rule of law and the rule of law from the enduring ideal of law itself. Roscoe Pound is universally recognized as one of the most important legal minds of the early twentieth century. Considered by many to be the dean of American jurisprudence, Pound was a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Nebraska and served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

Fuller, Lon L. The Law in Quest of Itself. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. [vi], 150 pp. Reprinted 1999 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-32863. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-016-9. ISBN-10: 1-58477-016-3. Cloth. $60.* Three lectures by the Harvard Law School professor examine legal positivism and natural law. In the course of his analysis Fuller discusses Kelsen's theory as a reactionary theory, and Hobbes' theory of sovereignty. He defines legal positivism as the viewpoint that draws a distinction "between the law that is and the law that ought to be..." (p.5) and interprets natural law as that which tolerates a combination of the two. He looks at the effects of positivism's continued influence on American legal thinking and concludes that law as a principle of order is necessary in a democracy.

One of the most trusted reference works ever published on the Cabala has been revised and expanded. Featuring a new and more usable format, this book is a complete guide to cabalistic magick and gematria in which every demon, angel, power and name of God ... every Sephirah, Path, and Plane of the Tree of Life ... and each attribute and association is fully described and cross-indexed by the Hebrew, English, and numerical forms. All entries are now incorporated into one comprehensive dictionary. There are hundreds of new entries and illustrations, making this book even more beneficial for Cabalistic pathworking and meditation. It now has many new Hebrew words and names, as well as the terms of Freemasonry, the entities of the Cthulhu mythos, and the Aurum Solis spellings for the names of the demons of the Goetia. It contains authentic Hebrew spellings, and a new introduction that explains the uses of the book for meditation on God names. The Cabalistic schema is native to the human psyche, and Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia will be an invaluable reference tool for all Cabalists, magicians, scholars and scientists of all disciplines.

A major statement from one of the foremost legal theorists of our day, this book offers a penetrating look into the political nature of legal, and especially judicial, decision making. It is also the first sustained attempt to integrate the American approach to law, an uneasy balance of deep commitment and intense skepticism, with the Continental tradition in social theory, philosophy, and psychology. At the center of this work is the question of how politics affects judicial activity-and how, in turn, lawmaking by judges affects American politics. Duncan Kennedy considers opposing views about whether law is political in character and, if so, how. He puts forward an original, distinctive, and remarkably lucid theory of adjudication that includes accounts of both judicial rhetoric and the experience of judging. With an eye to the current state of theory, legal or otherwise, he also includes a provocative discussion of postmodernism. Ultimately concerned with the practical consequences of ideas about the law, A Critique of Adjudication explores the aspects and implications of adjudication as few books have in this century. As a comprehensive and powerfully argued statement of a critical position in modern American legal thought, it will be essential to any balanced picture of the legal, political, and cultural life of our nation.

This primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. It covers such topics as rules, precedent, authority, analogical reasoning, the common law, statutory interpretation, legal realism, judicial opinions, legal facts, and burden of proof. In addressing the question whether legal reasoning is distinctive, Frederick Schauer emphasizes the formality and rule-dependence of law. When taking the words of a statute seriously, when following a rule even when it does not produce the best result, when treating the fact of a past decision as a reason for making the same decision again, or when relying on authoritative sources, the law embodies values other than simply that of making the best decision for the particular occasion or dispute. In thus pursuing goals of stability, predictability, and constraint on the idiosyncrasies of individual decision-makers, the law employs forms of reasoning that may not be unique to it but are far more dominant in legal decision-making than elsewhere. Schauer’s analysis of what makes legal reasoning special will be a valuable guide for students while also presenting a challenge to a wide range of current academic theories.