Overcoming Law - Hardcover

"Overcoming Law" takes the reader on a dazzling intellectual tour. Judge Richard Posner offers fascinating commentary on subjects ranging from the law of medieval Iceland to the legal community of the contemporary South Bronx. His interests range from the organization of legal services to the economics of homosexuality. Moreover, Posner is an exceptionally accessible and civil guide to this remarkable range of legal concerns.--Mark A. Graber "Law and Politics Book Review "

This text argues that legal theory must become more factual and empirical and less conceptual and polemical. The topics covered include: the structure and behaviour of the legal profession; constitutional theory; gender, sex and race theories; interdisciplinary approaches to law; the nature of legal reasoning; and legal pragmatism. Posner analyzes schools of thought as different as social contructionism and institutional economics, and scholars and judges as different as Bruce Ackerman, Robert Bork, Ronald Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Richard Rorty and Patricia Williams. He engages challenging issues in legal theory that range from the motivations and behaviour of judges and the role of rhetoric and analogy in law to the rationale for privacy and blackmail law and the regulation of employment contracts. The book also contains frank appraisals of controversial topics such as radical feminist and race theories, the behaviour of the German and British judiciaries in wartime and the excesses of social constructionist theories of sexual behaviour.