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Holmes, Langdell and Formalism
Author(s) -
Kelley Patrick J.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9337.00195
Subject(s) - appeal , normative , legal formalism , law , epistemology , formalism (music) , positivism , sociology , meaning (existential) , law and economics , political science , philosophy , comparative law , black letter law , private law , art , musical , visual arts
Both Holmes and Langdell believed that science was the model for all human inquiry and the source of all human progress. Langdell was influenced by an unsophisticated scientism, which led him to attempt to identify the true meaning of legal doctrines. Holmes was influenced by the sophisticated positivism of John Stuart Mill, which led him to attempt to reduce legal rules and doctrines to scientific laws of antecedence and consequence, justified only by their social consequences. Both Holmes and Langdell concluded that judges ought to decide a case by applying the rules established by precedent, without appeal to any special claims of justice and without appeal to any higher‐order normative principle.