Best Practices

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Essay
84.1
Concepts before Percepts: The Central Place of Doctrine in Legal Scholarship
Richard A. Epstein
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University School of Law; Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution; James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer, The University of Chicago Law School

My thanks to Bijan Aboutorabi, The University of Chicago Law School Class of 2018, and Philip Cooper, The University of Chicago Law School Class of 2017, for their valuable research assistance.

I.  Contract Damages

Best Practices Contract Law Jurisdiction Standing
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Essay
84.1
The Absence of Method in Statutory Interpretation
Frank H. Easterbrook
Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer, The Law School, The University of Chicago

This Essay was prepared for the Symposium “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis” at The University of Chicago on May 6 and 7, 2016, and is © 2017 by Frank H. Easterbrook.

A conference about “best practices” for legal inquiry supposes that there are practices. In the field of legal interpretation, that assumption is doubtful.

Best Practices Judicial Decision-Making Statutory Interpretation Textualism
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Essay
84.1
Making Doctrinal Work More Rigorous: Lessons from Systematic Reviews
William Baude
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Adam S. Chilton
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Anup Malani
Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

I.  The Case for Increased Rigor

We begin by surveying unsystematic claims about the state of legal doctrine, then go on to explain why, even if the claims are true, there are still benefits to more systematic review.

A.    Examples

Best Practices Empirical Analysis
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Essay
84.1
Searching for the Common Law: The Quantitative Approach of the Restatement of Consumer Contracts
Oren Bar-Gill
William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School

For helpful comments and suggestions, we thank Lewis Kornhauser, Richard Revesz, participants in The University of Chicago Law Review’s symposium on “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis,” and participants in the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts project.

Omri Ben-Shahar
Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, The University of Chicago Law School
Florencia Marotta-Wurgle
Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

Introduction

Applying a precedent is the fundamental craft of a common-law judge. Judges do not go back to general principles to derive novel solutions to each case at hand, along with novel justifications and renewed persuasion efforts.

Best Practices Consumer Law Contract Law Empirical Analysis
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Essay
84.1
A Call for Developing a Field of Positive Legal Methodology
William Baude
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Adam S. Chilton
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Anup Malani
Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Introduction

Best Practices

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