American Realism

Abstract

The movement known as American realism dominated American legal theory for roughly the first half of the 20th century. It constitutes a fairly broad church, but the common creed is scepticism about the role of rules in judicial decision-making, and an insistence that the way to discover what the courts do is to examine the law in action, rather than indulging in abstract theorizing. In an article originally published in 1930 (see 30 Colum L Rev 431) and reprinted in Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice, 1962, Karl Llewellyn (1893–1962), one of the movement’s most eminent members, summarizes one of its main tenets by distinguishing what he calls the real rules (which, he says, are in fact ‘the practices of the courts’ and not rules at all) from what he calls the paper rules. The real rules are ‘on the level of isness and not of oughtness; they seek earnestly to go no whit, in their suggestions, beyond the remedy actually available’.