Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1980
Publication Information
24 Am. J. Legal Hist. 189 (1980)
Abstract
"Formalism" is the label regularly used to describe judicial opinions of the late nineteenth century. The label is descriptive when used in contradistinction to "instrumentalism." Use of the label, however, has certain drawbacks. For example, there is little objective or empirical evidence to support the application of the two antithetical terms. In addition, a single term cannot reflect whatever diversity of styles may exist among the judges of a single court. This article describes the results of an attempt to rectify those two drawbacks and to determine whether the Justices of the Supreme Court at the turn of the century—while Melville Fuller was Chief Justice—were as monochromatic as the single term "formalism" would suggest. The article relies upon objective measurements to demonstrate that there was a variety, one might say a richness, of styles among the Justices of the Fuller Court.
The article is based upon a study of a sample of cases from eleven terms, from 1895 through 1905, of the Fuller Court. The sample was made up of the cases involving a challenge to the constitutionality of a statute, including state, federal, and territorial.
Recommended Citation
Walter F. Pratt,
Rhetorical Styles on the Fuller Court,
24 Am. J. Legal Hist. 189 (1980).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/13
Comments
Reprinted with permission from the American Journal of Legal History.