Interpreting Written Law: Formalism, Pragmatism, and Beyond

Harvard HLS

Prerequisite: None Exam Type: No Exam We’ll plan to tackle formalism and pragmatism, of course, but we intend to go both deeper and broader. Among other topics, we’ll explore old-school legal realism, probe the question whether textualism and originalism are in fact one and the same thing or just close cousins, and dive into the subtle-but-important distinctions between clinical, dictionary-driven ordinary "meaning" and organic, on-the-ground ordinary "understanding." We’ll likely…