American Legal Realism in Dispute Resolution. Alternative Dispute Resolution as a 'Realist' Project
| Autor | Carlo Vittorio Giabardo |
| Cargo | Juan de la Cierva' Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Law, University of Girona (Spain) |
| Páginas | 63-81 |
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dossier
A L R D R.
A D R “R” P
Realismo estadounidense en la resolución de conictos.
La resolución alternativa de conictos como un proyecto “realista”
C V G
University of Girona, Càtedra de Cultura Juridica, España
Abstract
American Legal Realism is alive and well. As a normative (and not only descriptive) theory,
it has shaped the legal world we are living in and has inuenced current legal practices at a
global level. is article looks at the inuence Realists’ ideas (and specically Charles Edward
Clark’s ones) have had ‘unconsciously’ over the phenomenon of the privatisation of civil justice
and the Alternative Dispute Resolution revolution. It is suggested that many key concepts of
Pragmatism and American Legal Realism form part of today’s repertoire of Alternative Dispute
Resolution supporters and that the privatisation of civil justice is to be understood as an “un-
intended” Realist project, in the sense that it is inspired by, and reects, a Realist view about law,
conict-resolution and justice without openly recognizing it.
Keywords
Philosophy of Law, American Legal Realism, Pragmatism, eory of Adjudication, Alternative
Dispute Resolution, Mediation.
Resumen
El realismo jurídico estadounidense está vivo y robusto. Como teoría normativa (y no solo
descriptiva), ha dado forma al mundo legal en el que estamos viviendo y ha inuido en las
prácticas legales actuales a nivel global. Este artículo analiza la inuencia que las ideas de autores
realistas (especícamente las de Charles Edward Clark) han tenido “inconscientemente”
sobre el fenómeno de la privatización de la justicia civil y sobre la revolución que implicó
la resolución alternativa de conictos. El texto sugiere que muchos conceptos clave del
pragmatismo y del realismo jurídico estadounidense forman parte del repertorio actual de
partidarios de la resolución alternativa de conictos. Asimismo, que la privatización de la
justicia civil debe entenderse como un proyecto “no intencionado” del realismo, pues está
inspirado por y reeja una visión realista del derecho, la resolución de conictos y la justicia,
aunque sin reconocerlo abiertamente.
1 is paper extends and develops some reections presented at the World Congress of the International Association for the
Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (I.V.R.) hosted by the University of Lucerne (Switzerland), July 2019, Special
Workshop “On the Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of North American Legal Realism”. I am especially grateful
to the organizers, Dr. Marco Segatti (University of Chicago Law School) and Dr. Luca Malagoli (Tarello Institute for Legal
Philosophy, University of Genova.).
2 “Juan de la Cierva” Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Law, University of Girona (Spain), Càtedra de Cultura Juridica. PhD in
Law, University of Turin (Italy). E-mail: carlovittorio.giabardo@udg.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7993-6762
Recibido: 04/02/2020 – Aceptado: 06/05/2020
Iuris Dictio Nº 25 / Junio 2020 / pp. 63-81
e-ISSN 2528-7834 / DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18272/iu.v25i25.1634
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Carlo Vittorio Giabardo
Iuris Dictio Nº25 / Junio, 2020 / pp.63-81. e-ISSN 2528-7834. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18272/iu.v25i25.1634
Palabras clave
Filosofía del derecho, Realismo jurídico estadounidense, Pragmatismo, Teoría de la adjudicación,
Resolución alternativa de disputas, Mediación.
1. e “Normative Dimension” of American Legal Realism
It is a commonly-held wisdom that American Legal Realism (hereinafter, ALR) has been an
inuential descriptive theory about how law truly works (i.e., how law is), but lacked any
coherent normative ideas for how legal institutions are expected to function (i.e., how law
should be). Its proponents —it is said— were so concerned in criticizing formalist accounts of
law, and substituting them with more useful explanations about the actual process of decision-
making by judges (considering, for example, the role their personal preferences or their
individual traits play or, more generally, their responsiveness to extra-legal factors, and so on)
that they left apart the construction of a purposeful theory that aspires to provide any kind of
guidance for law or decision-makers. ALR was an intellectual movement that, in essence, aimed
explicitly to destruct previous beliefs and overturn accepted attitudes, prevailing approaches,
methodologies, explanations, ways of teaching law, myths, and the like, but never aimed to
provide the “building blocks” for the future directions of law. In short —so the narrative goes—
while ALR provided a much-needful part destruens, it avoided almost completely to lay down
a solid part construens3. After having devastatingly critiqued what we have been knowing (or,
better said, believing) about law, the role of legal rules, and the activity of judges, they have left
us with nothing much in hands in order to solve social problems, improve common good and
provide guidance in reforming legal institutions. If law is nothing, if law means nothing, then
it would be contradictory to believe to change things through law.
is picture is far from being accurate. In fact, ALR has had an enormous impact on
subsequent legal reforms and on the ways we judge and implement new legal institutions and
practices. Some of its exponents showed, in their thoughts, a remarkably neat and distinctive
“normative dimension” that is seldom taken into consideration in current discussions. Basically,
this normative dimension is recognizable on two grounds: one is historical and, so to say,
“biographical”, and the other one looks at the present state of aairs.
First of all, if Realists did not believe in the power, or in the capacity, of the law
to purport social-legal change at all, it would be puzzling to explain why the writings of so
many of them possessed a clear reformistic outlook, and why much of their work undoubtedly
aimed to reform certain bodies of law in order that they reected their values (Leiter, 2015).
During the heyday of ALR, many of its most famous members got involved in major reform
projects of American laws. Jerome Frank (the most radical “rule-sceptic” of the movement)
contributed signicantly to the New Deal reforms4, and so did Felix S. Cohen and William
Douglas (Mitchell, 2007). Famously, Karl Llewellyn served as the “Chief Reporter” in the
drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code from 1942 until his death and inuenced deeply
the underlying “jurisprudence”5. Charles Edward Clark —a leading gure of ALR (but whose
3 See, e.g., Gilmore (1961, p. 1037): “Realism appears to have been a high-level jurisprudential or philosophical movement
[…] which oered a critical analysis, of a destructive or negative character, of certain then widely accepted theories of law”.
Compare also Duxbury (1995, p. 158): “Realism evolved as a broad critique of the formalist assumptions […] Beyond this
critique, however, there remained little but a marked absence of vision”; Mensch (2010, p. 25–26), according to which
Realism “was so corrosive that many of the most inuential realists evaded the full implications of their own criticism”.
4 On Jerome Frank, see Glennon (1985) and, more recently, Curtis (2015).
5 On the contribution of Karl Llewellyn to the UCC, see Maggs (2000); Kamp (1995), Danzig (1975).
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