The Evolution of a Justice
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RUTH BADER GINSBURG'S TEXTBOOK FOR COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL CLASS ON JURISPRUDENCE. PATTERSON, EDWIN W. Jurisprudence: Men and Ideas of the Law. Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, 1953.
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Find your local specialistRUTH BADER GINSBURG'S TEXTBOOK FOR COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL CLASS ON JURISPRUDENCE.
PATTERSON, EDWIN W. Jurisprudence: Men and Ideas of the Law. Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, 1953. 8vo. Original maroon pebbled cloth, lettered in gilt. Some toning to leaves, shelfwear.
FIRST PRINTED EDITION, UNDERSCORED AND ANNOTATED THROUGHOUT BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG.
After Martin Ginsburg graduated Harvard Law School in 1958 and accepted a position as a tax lawyer in New York City, Ruth Bader Ginsburg approached the Dean of the Harvard Law School to ask if, in order for her family to live together, she could finish her Harvard degree by taking her last year of classes at Columbia Law School. He refused, so Ginsburg transferred to Columbia to finish her degree, becoming the first woman to serve on two major law reviews and tying for first in her class at Columbia.
Patterson wrote this book for his Jurisprudence course at Columbia which Ginsburg took in the 1958-59 school year. First written in 1940, Jurisprudence was circulated in mimeo form before finally appearing in print in 1953. In his introduction, Patterson declares the book's purpose "to present concisely and clearly the ideas of the legal order and the general theories about law which have been and are most influential on the law of the United States...." A reviewer of the period referred to the book as the "ABCs of jurisprudence."
This volume is heavily underscored and annotated by Ginsburg throughout, not doubt as she prepared for classwork and exams. It's not hard to see in her annotations, however, the theoretical foundations of her own "gradualist" philosophy, particularly in the chapter on "Pragmatism in Legal Philosophy" which begins with a discussion of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roscoe Pound and William James. Ginsburg underscores, "What legal pragmatists did, for the most part, was to point out that the method of solving a legal problem, by finding an established legal rule and applying it logically to the facts, was not as 'certain' as the formal statement of rules and facts in the judicial opinion, nor as the statement of rules in the treatise or the statute book, made it appear to be." On the next pages she underscores Patterson's words on Pluralism, the assumption that there may be more than one or two kinds of reality: "pluralism is the piecemeal analysis of the diverse issues of diverse—physical, biological, psychological, linguistic and social—which resist solution by a single formula."
Ginsburg's underscoring and annotations are found throughout the book: in the chapter "Kelsen's Official Hierarchy" regarding the hierarchy of norms and rules in law; in "The Law of Judicial Precedents" (including a paragraph on "stare decisis" and logical indeterminacy of precedent); in "Historical and Evolutionary Theories of Law"; in "Utilitarianism: Bentham and Jhering" and in particular the sub-chapter on the "pleasure-pain principle" in ethics and legislation; and in "Sociological Jurisprudence and American Legal Realism" (particularly the sub-chapter on Roscoe Pound).
A rare and important artifact of Ginsburg's evolution as a jurist.
FIRST PRINTED EDITION, UNDERSCORED AND ANNOTATED THROUGHOUT BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG.
After Martin Ginsburg graduated Harvard Law School in 1958 and accepted a position as a tax lawyer in New York City, Ruth Bader Ginsburg approached the Dean of the Harvard Law School to ask if, in order for her family to live together, she could finish her Harvard degree by taking her last year of classes at Columbia Law School. He refused, so Ginsburg transferred to Columbia to finish her degree, becoming the first woman to serve on two major law reviews and tying for first in her class at Columbia.
Patterson wrote this book for his Jurisprudence course at Columbia which Ginsburg took in the 1958-59 school year. First written in 1940, Jurisprudence was circulated in mimeo form before finally appearing in print in 1953. In his introduction, Patterson declares the book's purpose "to present concisely and clearly the ideas of the legal order and the general theories about law which have been and are most influential on the law of the United States...." A reviewer of the period referred to the book as the "ABCs of jurisprudence."
This volume is heavily underscored and annotated by Ginsburg throughout, not doubt as she prepared for classwork and exams. It's not hard to see in her annotations, however, the theoretical foundations of her own "gradualist" philosophy, particularly in the chapter on "Pragmatism in Legal Philosophy" which begins with a discussion of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roscoe Pound and William James. Ginsburg underscores, "What legal pragmatists did, for the most part, was to point out that the method of solving a legal problem, by finding an established legal rule and applying it logically to the facts, was not as 'certain' as the formal statement of rules and facts in the judicial opinion, nor as the statement of rules in the treatise or the statute book, made it appear to be." On the next pages she underscores Patterson's words on Pluralism, the assumption that there may be more than one or two kinds of reality: "pluralism is the piecemeal analysis of the diverse issues of diverse—physical, biological, psychological, linguistic and social—which resist solution by a single formula."
Ginsburg's underscoring and annotations are found throughout the book: in the chapter "Kelsen's Official Hierarchy" regarding the hierarchy of norms and rules in law; in "The Law of Judicial Precedents" (including a paragraph on "stare decisis" and logical indeterminacy of precedent); in "Historical and Evolutionary Theories of Law"; in "Utilitarianism: Bentham and Jhering" and in particular the sub-chapter on the "pleasure-pain principle" in ethics and legislation; and in "Sociological Jurisprudence and American Legal Realism" (particularly the sub-chapter on Roscoe Pound).
A rare and important artifact of Ginsburg's evolution as a jurist.
