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'Easy Cases'? A Computerized Model of
Legal Realism and an Empirical Verification
Thereof
Posted: 19 Sep 2008
Eric Engle
CIEE
Date Written: September, 18 2008
Abstract
The legal realists charged that not only did law not serve substantive justice, it was in fact a
sham: a theatrical rationalisation to obscure, justify, and deploy power. However the realists also
pointed that this sham justice could be turned around: the same methods that served injustice
could be used for radical reform! This article and its accompanying program explores the realists'
thesis with a view to looking beyond the law to understand what driving forces actually lead
courts to reach their outcomes. As such it addresses the law not within its own terms but via a
meta-discourse based on Aristotelian moral theory. It then analyses this meta-theory of the law in
practice by looking at some recent cases in U.S. international law. The paper concludes that
while judges may sometimes rationalize their decisions they do not always do so, but when they
do it is possible to look through the law to understand their reasoning based using a metadiscourse based on Aristotelian moral theory. The computer program which accompanies this
article demonstrates these positions and allows the reader to experiment with different
combinations of fact and law so that the reader can develop their own understanding of the
complex but intuitive ideas presented here.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, ai, realism, cls, critical legal studies, duncan kennedy, theory
of judging, aristotle, moral theory, legal realism
JEL Classification: C8, K20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Engle, Eric, 'Easy Cases'? A Computerized Model of Legal Realism and an Empirical
Verification Thereof (September, 18 2008). Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=1270071 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1270071
Eric Allen Engle (Contact Author)
CIEE ( email )
Gneisenaustr. 27
Berlin
Germany
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