Home » Jurisprudence

Legal Realism

(a) Adjudication is restricted to available laws, that is, the judge can reach the required decision without recourse to non-legal normative considerations of morality or political philosophy.
(b) The law is “rationally” conclusive, i.e., the class of legitimate legal reasons available for a judge to offer in support of his decision justifies one and only one outcome (judicial review);
Deductive reasoning on the model of syllogism is the characteristic feature –i.e. the conclusion can be reconstructed as following deductively from a statement of the applicable rule of law and the statement of the facts.
It demands the identification of valid sources of law, the interpretation of sources, the distinguishing of sources that are relevant and irrelevant and they offer a theoretical account of how these various bits of reasoning are done ‘rightly’. Legal rules are based on judicial decisions given in interest of the larger society and public policy, and not on any dogma or supernatural authority. It defines 'legal rights' and 'legal duties' as whatever the courts say they are. Legal Realism has sometimes been called “Rule Skepticism”
i.e. Law is what courts do
Legal reasoning is indeterminate (i.e., fails to justify a unique outcome) the law is filled with gaps and contradictions, that there are exceptions for almost every legal rule or principle, and that legal principles and precedents can support different result. Judges makes law by declaring new rules not like formalisms mechanically discovering or applying the pre-existing law”
Law is not a scientific enterprise in which deductive reasoning can be applied to reach a determinate outcome in every case. Instead, most litigation presents hard questions that judges must resolve by balancing the interests of the parties and ultimately drawing an arbitrary line on one side of the dispute. This line is typically drawn in accordance with the political, economic and psychological inclination of the judge.

Ronald Dworkin & Justice Scalia The literal relationship of semantic or logical entailment between pure legal formalism and judicial constraint.“Autonomous conceptualism” answers to legal questions should be based upon distinctly legal materials, without reference to sources external to law or social sciences. ( law is distinct from morality)
First, legal concepts to be identified through induction, though that is a review of the evidence of case law. Second, the particular rules could then be derived “logically” fromthe concepts induced from the caselaw. Third, the result would be a self-contained, internally consistent, systemized and rationalized law that correct legal answers could be given to any question by reference to the logic of this system.
law is a rational and cohesive system of principles that judges must apply with integrity.This provides judges to do equal treatment to all litigants presenting legal claims that cannot honestly be distinguished.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that although no express provision of the federal Constitution guarantees the right to privacy, no precedent had established such a right. However, an individual's right to privacy can be inferred from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments .
W Holmes
W Holmes in “The Path of the Law,” 10 Harvard Law Review 457 writes, “It is because of some belief as to the practice of the community or a class, or because of some opinion as to policy, or, in short, because of some attitude of yours upon a matter not capable of exact quantitative measurement, and therefore not capable of founding exact logical conclusions.” There can be no certainty about law. Predictability depends upon the set of facts and decision on ‘emotive’ rather than logical grounds. Significance on psychological approach to the proper understanding of law as it is concerned with human behaviour and convictions of the lawyers and Judges.

Current Affairs Magazine