Influential Articles: Llewellyn’s Law-in-Action
In response to the Blog editor’s call for discussions of law review articles that have influenced our work as academics, I offer a few words on Karl Llewellyn’s “A Realistic Jurisprudence – The Next Step,” 30 Columbia Law Review 431 (1930). Llewellyn’s words are often cited as the first important salvo of the legal realist movement, and the article has influenced my own teaching and writing in virtually every subject area I’ve tackled.
Llewellyn begins by asserting that “law” is one of our “loosest of suggestive symbols.” “Law” ranges in his mind from such simple forms as statutes and appellate holdings to a range of socio-cultural control devices and institutions. “I have no desire to exclude anything from matters legal,” Llewellyn says. “I am not going to attempt a definition of “law. Not anybody’s definition; much less my own.”
However, Llewellyn then goes on in the bulk of the article to emphasize a particular “focus” or “point of reference.”