How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine - by Pierre Schlag (Paperback)

About the Book

"The concept of legal doctrine and its role in how we understand the structure of law has changed over time, especially with the critique of formal law by American legal realists and their insistence on the pliability of law. And yet doctrine remains central to the expression and analysis of law in the judiciary and among practicing lawyers. Recently interest in doctrine as a legal form that embodies and expresses legal arguments, principles, policies, and values, has revived. Pierre Schlag and Amy J. Griffin seek to further the study of doctrine. How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine argues that careful attention to the form and nature of doctrinal arguments can illuminate the structures by which the law operates. Such an understanding offers legal professionals and students the opportunity to better relate law to a specific case and to comprehend how legal argument, often conducted through doctrines, fits within the judicial system. Schlag and Griffin also show how the study of doctrine can illuminate the similarities between substantive legal fields, as we might see how the doctrine of "consent" in one field is similar to the concept of "assumption of risk" in another"--

Book Synopsis

Legal doctrine-the creation of doctrinal concepts, arguments, and legal regimes built on the foundation of written law-is the currency of contemporary law. Yet law students, lawyers, and judges often take doctrine for granted, without asking even the most basic questions. How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine is a sweeping and original study that focuses on how to understand legal doctrine via a hands-on approach. Taking up the provocative invitations from the "New Doctrinalists," Pierre Schlag and Amy J. Griffin refine the conceptual and rhetorical operations legal professionals perform with doctrine-focusing especially on those difficult moments where law seems to run out, but legal argument must go on. The authors make the crucial operations of doctrine explicit, revealing how they work, and how they shape the law that emerges. How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine will help all those studying or working with law to gain a more systematic understanding of the doctrinal moves many of our best lawyers make intuitively.

Review Quotes

"How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine would be a welcome addition for academic law library collections. It provides a comprehensive discussion of legal doctrine and related concepts."-- "Canadian Law Library Review"

"Two talented legal thinkers have put their minds to making a taxonomy of taxonomies! . . . For the benefit of all who read How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine, the book masterfully restates and improves received wisdom on how legal analysis works to create doctrine, but also adds many of its own insights. . . . this is an elegant, useful volume. I highly commend it as a good read."-- "Journal of Legal Education"

About the Author

Pierre Schlag is distinguished professor at the University of Colorado and the Byron R. White Professor at Colorado Law. His books include The Enchantment of Reason and Laying Down the Law. Amy J. Griffin professor of legal writing and the associate dean for instructional development at Colorado Law.