Test Your Knowledge of Modern American Legal Thought and Decision Making

Study Notes

In the 1940s, Laswell and McDougal proposed teaching law students how to make and implement policy decisions.
Post-realist reconstructors of American legal thought incorporated realist insights into the legal system.
Hart and Sacks' legal process materials offered a vision of American society with shared values in institutional competencies.
Judges had the competence to settle questions that could be settled by reference to general, articulated standards.
Modern case law accepts the absence of clear boundaries between categories, with boundaries portrayed as fluid or blurred.
The blurring of boundaries cuts across all doctrinal lines, including contract and tort distinctions.
In constitutional law, the line between public and private can only be located by applying a puzzling array of increasingly refined and contextual "tests."
The breakdown of boundaries and uniform, generally applicable categories has led to the breakdown of the deep sense of analogy and uniformity that once characterized classical thought.
Modern American legal thought continues to be premised on the distinction between private law and public law.
Private law is still assumed to be separate from public law.
Private actors make private choices in private law.
Judges refer to public policy when justifying private law decisions.
Edward Levi and Karl Llewellyn acknowledge policy choice in legal decision making.
Judges work within a long-established common law tradition.
Judges acquire a "craft-consciousness" and respond to new situations through a "reworking of the heritage."
Benjamin Cardozo is an example of enlightened decision making.
Cardozo modified the classical privit of contract rule in McPherson v. Buick Motors Company.
Cardozo referred to changes in automobile retailing practices and the category of "abnormally dangerous" products.
The tort doctrine of foreseeability is manipulable.
Modern private-law thinking concedes and evades the inevitability of value choice in legal decision making.

Description

Test your knowledge on the evolution of American legal thought with this quiz! From the proposals of Laswell and McDougal to the post-realist reconstructors, explore the incorporation of realist insights into the legal system. Discover the breakdown of boundaries and the blurring of categories in modern case law and constitutional law, and learn how judges make policy choices in legal decision making. Test your knowledge of notable legal thinkers, such as Edward Levi and Benjamin Cardozo, and their contributions to the evolution of American