Legal Realism - Expanding Influence

Expanding Influence

Many developments in legal thought have drawn heavily from legal realism, including the writings of Herman Oliphant (1884-1939) and the development of the legal process school in the 1950s and 1960s, a theory that attempted to chart a middle way between the extremes of realism and formalism. Realism remains influential, and a wide spectrum of jurisprudential schools today have either taken its premises to greater extremes, such as critical legal studies (scholars such as Duncan Kennedy and Roberto Unger), feminist legal theory, and critical race theory, particularly at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and Yale Law School, or more moderately, such as law and economics (scholars such as Richard Posner at the University of Chicago and Richard Epstein at University of Chicago and New York University School of Law) and law and society (scholars such as Marc Galanter and Stewart Macaulay at the University of Wisconsin Law School). Legal realism also influenced the recognition of political science and studies of judicial behavior therein as a specialized discipline within the social sciences.