34 - Fresh Looks, Philosophy-in-Action, and American Law

Summary

Mootz's premise: ask a large number of talented and wide-ranging legal thinkers to share their thoughts about the ongoing development of American law, and more specifically about the intersection of philosophy and law in America at this moment in time. Don't give them much space. Discourage footnotes. As a shared point of provocation, refer them to a short piece of critical reflection, speculation, and exhortation by a man who seventy-five years ago asked himself a similar question. Could today's academics, legal and otherwise, play along? Would they embrace Mootz's license to think out loud? If they did, what would happen?

In what follows, I offer my view on some of these matters. The essays in this volume are impressive on several fronts. Many would be, even if published in isolation, superb pieces of work. For example, Balkin's penetrating account of critical legal theory suggests new roles and critical possibilities in the present for a movement that is seldom mentioned outside of obituaries these days. But the volume does something more than provide space for tantalizing hypotheses, though it certainly does this. It draws attention to philosophy and American law in a way which exemplifies the key moments of Llewellyn's short essay.

Llewellyn encouraged us to take a fresh look at matters of theoretical and practical concern. He drew our attention not to dusty tombs of arid and abstract philosophical speculation, but to what he called philosophy-in-action.