Legal formalism proclaims that cases can be resolved through the logical application of abstract rules or doctrines. Courts supposedly apply formal rules in an apolitical or neutral fashion. The ...

Judge Wallace’s opinion proves that subjectivity is a foible of formalism at least as much as it is part of any other approach to legal interpretation. She could have used common sense instead.

conclusions that challenge conventional accounts of legal formalism. Unprecedented in its coverage and its innovative conclusions about major American legal thinkers from the Civil War to the present, ...