Law and the Modern Mind first appeared in 1930 when, in the words of Judge Charles E. Clark, it "fell like a bomb on the legal world." In the generations since, its influence has grown--today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence. The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the delusion that the law is a bastion of predictable and logical action. Jerome Frank's controversial thesis is that the decisions made by judge and jury are determined to an enormous extent by powerful, concealed, and highly idiosyncratic psychological prejudices that these decision-makers bring to the courtroom. Frank points out that legal verdicts are supposed to result from the application of legal rules to the facts of the suit--a procedure that sounds utterly methodical. Frank argues, that profound, immeasurable biases strongly influence the judge and jury's reaction to witnesses, lawyers, and litigants. As a result, we can never know what they will believe "the facts of the suit" to be. The trial's results become unforeseeable, the lawyer's advice unreliable, and the cause of justice insecure. This edition includes the author's final preface in which he answers two decades of criticism of his position.

Robert Nagel's innovative volume attempts to explain why, despite almost four decades of conservative and moderate appointments, the Supreme Court continues to intervene aggressively in a wide array of social and political issues. The explanation lies primarily in the psychological effects of the way that lawyers think about law and judging. The instincts ingrained by the experiences common to legal education and the successful practice of law also work to encourage the reckless use of power. Nagel argues that the problem with the modern judicial role is cultural and political. He demonstrates that judges, especially Supreme Court justices, have degraded our political discourse, intensified social conflict, and drained moral confidence. By examining modern Supreme Court confirmation hearings along with certain classic legal writings, Nagel shows how modern lawyers have a broad consensus on how to interpret the Constitution and, more generally, how to think about law. One major component of this mindset is to combine realism with legalism in ways that naturally tend to expand the judiciary's imperial role. Realism counsels that decisions are inevitably partly personal and therefore cannot be conclusively justified while legalism imparts the sense that the judge's interpretation is the best one possible. This combination of the personal and political, along with other aspects of modem legal thinking and training, means that judges are not only unconstrained by professional norms but actually are impelled by them to use power expansively. This issue is important to every person living in the U.S., as the Supreme Court's decisions concern everyone in the nation. It has the potential to be read by lawmakers, lawyers, students of law and political science, and anyone interested in Constitutional law. The thesis is unique and the execution is precise.