Views on legal realism?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Positive. The impact of the law in the material world, on real people, is far more important than formalistic rules or abstract "originalist" theories that serve to obscure and deflect from the political priorities of their ostensible proponents.

[Del Tachi]

Observing the "impact" the law has on "real people" is not really separable from some normative belief about who the law should exist to benefit, so I don't see how this is any better than more explicitly political legal philosophies.  Secondly, legal realism turns the law into social science and legal practitioners into social scientists concerned with quantitatively assessing the law and its associated outcomes.  I don't see how this approach is a necessarily useful lens for inherently political/subjective Constitutional debates, so legal realism is just another example of technocratic scientism run amok in our cultural institutions.  This philosophy is a Massive HP.   

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Have to agree with Del Tachi. Basing legal decisions on what practical effects they have on people seems incompatible with principles of justice. Not everything needs to be an exercise in utilitarianism.

[lfromnj]

When the law is made is the time to worry about impact on people. The judiciary should merely interpret it and assume it has a benefit to the people unless it violates another law.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I am in favour. I don't see why realism should be made illegal.

[Skill and Chance]

In general, natural law > judicial minimalism > legal realism > legal positivism

[Kingpoleon]

In general, natural law > judicial minimalism > legal realism > legal positivism

Where does judicial activism fall?

[politicallefty]

     Have to agree with Del Tachi. Basing legal decisions on what practical effects they have on people seems incompatible with principles of justice. Not everything needs to be an exercise in utilitarianism.

I think there are definitely times when it needs to be considered, particularly when considering overruling precedent (particularly what is now recognized as "super-precedent"). I realize you have a blue avatar, but what if you had a certain composition of Justices willing to rule Social Security and/or Medicare unconstitutional in one fell swoop?

[Hnv1]

why the dichotomy? legal realism is more of a research programme on law, it's not (conclusively) prescriptive on how we should shape laws though we might want to take those insights in mind when creating new laws. We're all realists in a sense anyhow, we all accept economic, psychological, and sociological factors play a descriptive role in how jurists practice law.

I can be a realist, but think that formalism is normatively warranted but knowing how judges work demand that they write clear reasoning that could be tracked in a formalistic way to detect 'errors'.

These are theories that answer different questions. You have ontological theories on what law is, positivism as opposed to natural law (positivism includes realism, while natural law includes Dworkinian theory). and you have normative theories on what makes a legitimate law, granted for strong natural law theories the questions overlap.

and to top that you have theories of adjudication about how judges should make decisions.

[MarkD]

Positive. The impact of the law in the material world, on real people, is far more important than formalistic rules or abstract "originalist" theories that serve to obscure and deflect from the political priorities of their ostensible proponents.

I don't think you have an accurate understanding of how legal realism is defined. It is not a theory that judges should base their decisions primarily on considering the practical impact the ruling will have. It is a theory that judges do base their decisions on their own values.

Legal realists -- and all good lawyers must be realists -- have long understood that the arguments put forward by courts to justify their decisions are often simply after-the-fact rationalizations of results reached for reasons they are unwilling to acknowledge publicly -- reasons such as ideological, religious, or economic preferences. Lawyers are taught to argue both sides of every issue. Any good lawyer is capable of rationalizing virtually any conclusion he wishes to reach by plausible arguments. ...
Some judges, of course, do actually apply the law in a neutral way, without regard to their personal preferences. Others decieve themselves into believing that the arguments they are offering are neutral -- that is, not explicitly calculated to produce a desired outcome. As an experienced judge once told me, "The judicial capacity to kid oneself is limitless, because judges want to -- need to -- persuade themselves that they are doing the right thing."
(Alan Dershowitz, "Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000," published 2001, pages 187-188.)

Columbia [Law School] was the place to be in the late 1920s. It was the home of the legal realist movement, which Douglas became a part of almost immediately. Building on the earlier work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Chipman Gray, and Roscoe Pound, the realists insisted that judges are important participants in the government and society. The law is and must be influenced by economics, politics, and social reform; it is clearly more than the product of accurate fact finding and the analytically precise interpretation and application of rules. Douglas carried this sense of the nature of law with him throughout his career.
(Howard Ball and Philip J. Cooper, "Of Power and Right," published 1992, pages 40-41. Emphasis added.)

Emphasis on the word "politics." Columbia was the first home to the "legal realists," but the movement later transferred to Yale Law School.

The Yale thesis, crudely put, is that any judges chooses his results and reasons backward. The resources of legal artifice, the ambiguity of precedents, the range of applicable doctrine, are all so extensive that in most cases in which there is a reasonable difference of opinion a judge can come out on either side without straining the fabric of legal logic. A naive judge does this unconsciously and conceives himself to be an objective interpreter of the law. A wise judge knows that political choice is inevitable; he makes no false pretense of objectivity and consciously exercises the judicial power with an eye to social results.
(Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The Supreme Court: 1947," Fortune, Vol. 35, Jan. 1947. Emphasis added.)

Emphasis on "political choice."

[Skill and Chance]

In general, natural law > judicial minimalism > legal realism > legal positivism

Where does judicial activism fall?

Most of the time under legal positivism, but there are occasionally opinions that read as both activist and based in natural law, e.g. Gorsuch reestablishing Native American land rights based in 19th century treaties.