This unique study offers a comprehensive analysis of American jurisprudence from its emergence in the later stages of the nineteenth century through to the present day. The author argues that it is a mistake to view American jurisprudence as a collection of movements and schools which have emerged in opposition to each other. By offering a highly original analysis of legal formalism, legal realism, policy science, process jurisprudence, law and economics, and critical legal studies, he demonstrates that American jurisprudence has evolved as a collection of themes which reflect broader American intellectual and cultural concerns.

"Index to the Sociological papers and reports of the American Sociological Society, 1906-1930;" v. 25, p. 226-258.

The field of socio-legal research has encountered three fundamental challenges over the last three decades – it has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to legal doctrine, for failing to develop a sound theoretical foundation and for not keeping pace with the effects of the increasing globalization and internationalization of law, state and society. This book examines these three challenges from a methodological standpoint. It addresses the first two by demonstrating that legal sociology has much to say about justice as a kind of social experience and has always engaged theoretically with forms of normativity, albeit on its own empirical terms rather than on legal theory’s analytical terms. The book then explores the third challenge, a result of the changing nature of society, by highlighting the move from the industrial relations of early modernity to the post-industrial conditions of late modernity, an age dominated by information technology. It poses the question whether socio-legal research has sufficiently reassessed its own theoretical premises regarding the relationship between law, state and society, so as to grasp the new social and cultural forms of organization specific to the twenty-first century’s global societies.

The intellectual development of American legal thought has progressed remarkably quickly form the nation's founding through today. Stephen Feldman traces this development through the lens of broader intellectual movements and in this work applies the concepts of premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism to legal thought, using examples or significant cases from Supreme Court history. Comprehensive and accessible, this single volume provides an overview of the evolution of American legal thought up to the present.