Abstract
“New Legal Realism” is a thriving and productive interdisciplinary movement in academic legal theory and analysis. It often involves attempts to explain or predict judicial decision-making by reference to patterns of judicial behavior identified in close analysis of empirical data. In this article, rather than attempting to evaluate the actual or potential success of this approach, I aim to point out three important limitations. I draw examples from the work of prominent scholars Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, and Howard Gillman and argue that their ambitious claims with respect to (1) judicial psychology, (2) the best answers to questions of law, and (3) jurists’ character or the morality of their actions constitute regrettable attempts to derive unwarranted conclusions based on insufficient and inapposite data and arguments. I conclude that New Legal Realists should avoid these misapplications in order to confine their promising research project to its proper bounds.
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