Frontiers of Legal Theory

[Posners] book provides an external analysis of the law and immerses the reader in an incredible discourse of the application of economics, history, psychology and epistemology to a variety of legal subjects The attentive reader will be fascinated, not only by the extraordinary depth of the discussion, but by the successful way this Renaissance judge has attempted to develop a more responsive legal system by using the fresh perspective of extra-legal disciplines. -- Ellen M. Heller * Baltimore Sun * After somewhat controversial forays into the debates over Bill Clintons impeachmentand the 2000 presidential electionJudge Posner is back where he seems most comfortable, waxing at length over the relationship between legal theory and other academic disciplines including economics, psychology, history, and statistics [H]is argument that legal practice itself should be treated as an academic discipline like any other is original, crisply explained, and should serve as fodder for future discussion. -- D. Yalof * Choice * As both a federal judge and an author, Posner is well qualified to provide us with this timely overview of the leading trends currently guiding American legal thought. Promoting the concept of legal theory as a unified field of social science, the author delineates five areas for particular scrutiny: economics, history, psychology, epistemology, and quantitative empiricism. Posner cleverly argues for the transformation of the practice of law to an academic discipline by noting some of the inherent advantages An empirical approach to the law can, the author claims, shed new light on issues such as campaign finance reform, free speech, and regulation of the Internet. -- Philip Y. Blue * Library Journal * Posner offers insights into such controversial issues as hate crime legislation, controls over speech on the Internet, the costs and benefits of the jury system, and the standards for excluding categories of evidence from trial. [Posners] take on these issues is unfailingly original, crisply expressed and appropriately qualified by recognition of the limitations as well as the strengths of theory applied to real-world problems. * Publishers Weekly *

Richard A. Posner retired as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. He was previously a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Introduction I. Economics 1. The Law and Economics Movement: From Bentham to Becker 2. The Speech Market 3. Normative Law and Economics: From Utilitarianism to Pragmatism II. History 4. Law's Dependence on the Past 5. Historicism in Legal Scholarship: Ackerman and Kahn 6. Savigny, Holmes, and the Law and Economics of Possession III. Psychology 7. Emotion in Law 8. Behavioral Law and Economics 9. Social Norms, with a Note on Religion IV. Epistemology 10. Testimony 11. The Principles of Evidence and the Critique of Adversarial Procedure 12. The Rules of Evidence V. Empiricism 13. Counting, Especially Citations Acknowledgments Index