Wednesday, March 04, 2009

 

Now that's a poll!


Over at Brian Leiter's blog, he now has a poll on the greatest legal thinker of the 20th Century. At last check, Richard Posner was far ahead of the others... but this is a poll hosted out of the University of Chicago. I'm sure things will even out as people from all over jump in... or maybe they won't. It is hard to dispute Posner's influence.

Here are the nominees:

Bruce Ackerman
Guido Calabresi
Benjamin Cardozo
Ronald Dworkin
Richard Epstein
Lon Fuller
Henry M. Hart, Jr.
Karl Llewellyn
Richard Posner
Roscoe Pound
Herbert Wechsler

Interestingly, I was a student of two of the nominees, one of whom I have previously discussed here. Wow, that makes me feel really old. I'm pretty sure, though, that I was not a student of any of the top legal thinkers of the 19th century...

Now get over there and vote!

Comments:
Ben Cardozo by a country mile. Not even a question.
 
Some other potential candidates:

-Judge Harry T. Stone
-Vincent Gambini
-Lt. Daniel Kaffee
-Jake Tyler Brigance
-Perry Mason
-Benjamin Matlock
-Ally McBeal
 
What about Judy Judy and Perry Mason?

I went and read your piece on Dean Calabresi - he sounds like a wonderful, observant and wise man.
 
Definitely not Llewellyn, I remember Bates making us read that for LARC. All I remember is that it had something to do with a bush of some sort.
 
I haven't heard of any of these people. As a third year law student, is that bad?
 
Hart, maybe. I'd buy Pound. Not Fuller or Dworkin. Cardozo wrote excellent opinions, but as a legal philosopher?

Also, and not that I expected any different from a dirty LR like Leiter, but where are the non-Anglophone philosophers? Alex Hägerström? Willem Bonger?

Also, the notable lack of Critical Legal Studies scholars bothers me, but again... Leiter has little good to say of Continental philosophy in other matters, so I shouldn't be surprised that analytic philosophy of law dominates his poll.
 
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