The Problems of Jurisprudence by Richard A. Posner (original) (raw)

Reviewed by Raymond B. Marcin* Dust off those old copies of William James.' Pragmatism is "in." 2 Richard A. Posner's newest book, THE PROBLEMS OF JURISPRUDENCE, may well signal the vocabulary of Pragmatism as the lingua franca of jurisprudence in the 1990's. Those who are looking for a "unified field theory" to encompass all of the insights of the great jurisprudential movements of today will find something to chew on in Posner's new book. He does not announce such a theory; in fact, he all but discounts it in his treatment of literary, feminist, and criticalist jurisprudence. In his endorsement of philosophical pragmatism, however, he provides a vocabulary and a set of concepts that render communication among the various contemporary schools, especially the law-and-economics and so-called new-legal-process schools, possible and even efficient. There is a surprise or two in the book for doctrinaire law-and-economics disciples. Posner actually modifies some of his previously published views on wealth maximization, which he now sees as playing only a "limited role" in his theory. 3 Indeed, he spends a goodly portion of the book recasting the wealth-maximization approach to law in pragmatic terms. 4 In reading the * Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School.