Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:46:49.837Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

25 - Opinions and Decisions: Legal Essays

from Part III - Postwar Essays and Essayism (1945–2000)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2024

By
Peter Goodrich
Edited by
Christy Wampole  and
Jason Childs
Christy Wampole
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

The relationship between the law and the essay, this chapter shows, is visible in the etymology of the latter. Derived from assayer, to try, and essai, or trial, the etymology connotes action, endeavor, and experiment aimed at proof leading to judgment. However, the essay as literary genre is often marked not by the finality of judgment but by levity, incompletion, indigestion, distraction, and exploratory attempts. The apparently antithetical senses of the essay – as comedic and judicial, frivolous and veridical, theatrical and juristic, popular and esoteric – are key to understanding its later development and certain specifically distinctive features of the “American” genre of legal exploratory discourse. This chapter shows the influence of pragmatism and egalitarian realism on American legal writing, offers examples of the legal polemics that unfolded in the pages of important American law journals, and argues that the importance of the essay form is to clear a space, to act out in ideas what practice has not yet tested, and so to become the theater that stages in advance the future of law.

Keywords

lawpragmatismlegal discourselaw journalsopinionsjudgmentsOliver Wendell Holmes Jr.Louis Brandeis
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Essay , pp. 425 - 440
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×