This book has a completely original theme, or set of themes. It offers first a new way of analyzing styles of legal reasoning--between more "formal" and more "substantive" styles--that is a major contribution to jurisprudence in its own right. The authors then go on to demonstrate in detail the differences in legal reasoning--and in the legal systems as a whole--between England and America, and suggest that the English is a much more "formal" system and the American a more "substantive." Finally, the book explores a wide range of cultural, institutional, and historical factors relating to the...

As I explain in the introduction, this is the third in aseries of collections of my previously published essays in legal theory. All of the essays here but three have been revised for this volume. I now wish to record my gratitude and indebtedness to various persons. I am most indebted and grateful to my wife, Dorothy Kopp Summers, to whom I dedicate this book. I also wish to re cord my gratitude for his interest and patience to Hendrik-Jan van Leusen of Kluwer Academic Publishers. He strongly encouraged me to put this collection together, and without his efforts, it certainly would not have...

This book addresses three major questions about law and legal systems: (1) What are the defining and organizing forms of legal institutions, legal rules, interpretive methodologies, and other legal phenomena? (2) How does frontal and systematic focus on these forms advance understanding of such phenomena? (3) What credit should the functions of forms have when such phenomena serve policy and related purposes, rule of law values, and fundamental political values such as democracy, liberty, and justice? The answers not only provide articulate conversancy with the subject but also reveal...