What is New Legal Realism?
Why is law so slow to get what's really happening? Why is it often so far away from our real-world experiences? The New Legal Realism movement springs from this frustration. The social sciences study how law really works, using systematic methods. But lawyers and policymakers don't often use that social science knowledge. Law students are never taught about the full range of social science that they could draw on to solve legal problems. At best, our lawyers and judges grab at bits and pieces -- some statistics here, interviews there, observations, experiments -- all jumbled up and often just plain wrong. Social scientists may be baffled about what lawyers need from them -- or how law approaches the world. And THAT'S why we need New Legal Realism, or "NLR." NLR doesn't choose one method or one kind of social science. It doesn't ignore the standards social sciences use to judge good research. But it also doesn't ignore how law works, or how lawyers talk. Law uses its own weird language. So do the social sciences. It's time to find more productive ways to communicate, so that law can get real in addressing our problems. That's the job a new generation of NLR scholars is tackling. Join our conversation!
In 2016, three books that laid out foundations for NLR appeared: The New Legal Realism, Volumes 1 & 2 from Cambridge University Press, and Translating the Social World for Law from Oxford University Press. Season 1 of our NLR podcast features interviews with authors from these books.
