The domestication of legal argumentation: A case study of the formalism of the legal realists

Abstract

This essay explores the discourse of the legal realists. The pragmatists and the legal realists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have become an important part of Anglo‐American jurisprudence. These jurists, lawyers, and legal theorists are considered to be influential legal scholars because of their critiques of transcendental, certain, and deductive proofs in legal argumentation. The essay argues that while the legal realists added to our understanding of informal logic and legal pragmatism, they nevertheless domesticated their arguments by replacing deductive formalisms with inductive formalisms.