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1 Theory & Prac. Legis. 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/thorceleg1 and id is 1 raw text is: DOI: 10.5235/2050-8840.1.1.1 INTRODUCTION Pierre Brunet* What has legal realism to say about legislation? Does it really have anything to say about it? Indeed, the topic offers a real paradox and a great challenge. At a first glance, talk about appropriate legislation or decision-making in the legal realm does not seem to belong to the realist tradition. Its very approach to the topic builds on the inherently ambiguous notion of legislation. First of all because 'legislation' - as most words ending in '-tion' - indicates both a process and the result of the process: It stands both for the process of passing a statute and the very enacted statute. Moreover, as a process, legislation may refer to legislative authority as well as the activity ofjudges. Add to this the fact that 'realism' is not an univocal label even within legal theory and despite the fact that we all (think we) know who the realists were, it remains a controversial issue to establish how to best understand realism and which theories of law fit the label. Numerous scholarly works, published over the last twenty years, have contributed to putting an end to the 'frankification of realism', and legal realism is today no longer reducible to a debate on the idiosyncrasies ofjudges. Yet, in avoiding any such reductionism, the papers collected in this special issue should not appear to go in too disparate directions. In fact, the contributions have a common starting point: like Hanoch Dagan argues, realism is 'insisting on a view of law as a set of ongoing institutions distinguished by the difficult accommodation of three constitutive yet irresolvable tensions: between power and reason, science and craft, and tradition and progress'. Embracing this general conception, the ten papers in this special issue are grouped in the following way. Part A deals with conceptions of legislation in the tradition of Scandinavian realism, and consists of four papers, each dedicated to an important Scandinavian realist: Patricia Mindus presents the view of Axel Hagerstrom, T.T. Arvind that of Vilhelm Lundstedt, Torben Spaak that of Karl Olivecrona and Eric Millard that of Alf Ross. Part B deals with conceptions of legislation in the tradition of American realism: Danni Hart discusses the contribution of Karl Llewellyn, Michael Green that of Felix Cohen and Frank B. Cross that of the movement known as new realism. Part C, titled Questioning Realism Today, groups three papers with more general theoretical claims about * Pierre Brunet is Professor of Public Law, Director of the UMR CNRS 7074, Centre de Th6orie et Analyse du Droit. 1 See e.g. W.W. Fisher III, M. Horwitz and T.A. Reed, American Legal Realism (OUP 1993) 167; B. Leiter, 'American Legal Realism' in M.P. Golding and W.A. Edmundson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy ofLaw and Legal Theory (Blackwell 2005) 50-66.

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