Legal thought is a much broader category, and one of more general interest to law students, than jurisprudence, but until now there has been no collection available to readers. By bringing together these classic pieces exemplifying the main themes and schools of modern American legal thought, this book will be extremely useful to any teacher of the subject.

The editors provide an introduction to each article, making the sophisticated scholarship more accessible and highlighting connections among articles whose subjects range from contracts to republican theory. While not everyone will agree with the editors' selections, Professors David Kennedy and William Fisher have undeniably performed a valuable service to scholars and students and have provided an important baseline for understanding legal thought.

[This book] is invaluable evidence that the study of law and the distinctive arguments and claims characteristic to legal practice and academia, are worthy of study as an autonomous discipline. In an age where the legal academy is increasingly moving toward a 'law and --' model of scholarship, this weighty reminder that the law warrants its own study could not be more timely.

David Kennedy is Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law and Director of the European Law Research Center at Harvard Law School. His books include "The Dark Sides of Virtue" and "Of War and Law"(forthcoming) (both Princeton). William W. Fisher III is Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. His most recent book is "Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment".

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Part I: Attacking the Old Order: 1900-1940

Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Path of the Law," 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897) 19

Wesley Hohfeld, "Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning," 23 Yale Law Journal 16 (1913) 45

Robert Hale, "Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Noncoercive State," 38 Political Science Quarterly 470 (1923) 83

John Dewey, "Logical Method and Law," 10 Cornell Law Quarterly 17 (1924) 111

Karl Llewellyn, "Some Realism About Realism--Responding to Dean Pound," 44 Harvard Law Review 1222 (1931) 131

Felix Cohen, "Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach," 35 Columbia Law Review 809 (1935) 163

Part II: A New Order: The Legal Process, Policy, and Principle: 1940-1960

Lon L. Fuller, "Consideration and Form," 41 Columbia Law Review 799 (1941) 207

Henry M. Hart, Jr., and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, Problem No. 1 (unpublished manuscript, 1958) 241

Herbert Wechsler, "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law," 73 Harvard Law Review 1 (1959) 311

Part III: The Emergence of Eclecticism: 1960-2000

Policy and Economics Ronald H. Coase, "The Problem of Social Cost," 3 Journal of Law and Economics 1 (1960) 353

Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed, "Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral," 85 Harvard Law Review 1089 (1972) 401

The Law and Society Movement

Stewart Macaulay, "Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study," 28 American Sociological Review 55 (1963) 445

Marc Galanter, "Why the'Haves' Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change," 9 Law and Society Review 95 (1974) 481

Liberalism: Interpretation and the Role of the Judge Ronald Dworkin, "Hard Cases," 88 Harvard Law Review 1057 (1975) 549

Abram Chayes, "The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation," 89 Harvard Law Review 1281 (1976) 603

Critical Legal Studies

Duncan Kennedy, "Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication," 88 Harvard Law Review 1685 (1976) 647

Liberalism: Legal Philosophy and Ethics

Robert Cover, "Violence and the Word," 95 Yale Law Journal 1601 (1986) 733

Frank Michelman, "Law's Republic," 97 Yale Law Journal 1493 (1988) 777

Identity Politics

Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory," 7:3 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 515 (1982) 829

Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence," 8 Signs: Journal of Women, Culture, and Society 635 (1983) 869

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds., "Introduction," Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, The New Press, New York, 1996 at xiii-xxxii 887