September 23, 2025
After the Realist Revolution Judicial: Lawmaking in an Age of Instrumentalist Common Law JurisprudenceProfessor Marin Scordato of Catholic Law has released a new book After the Realist Revolution: Judicial Lawmaking in an Age of Instrumentalist Common Law Jurisprudence. After the Realist Revolution extends the existing academic study of American common law into new and previously unexplored areas. Professor Scordato examines the conventional understanding of appellate court lawmaking and the profound change in the common understanding of that activity that occurred during the mid-twentieth century. Scordato argues that this change in the conventional account of common law can be best understood as an authentic paradigm shift, akin to those described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The book also sheds light on the ways in which the current instrumentalist approach to appellate court lawmaking is influenced and, in some respects, compromised by the structures and procedures that were created during the prior formalist era.