ABSTRACT
In American legal philosophy—whether the formalist, "scientific" approach of Christopher Columbus Langdell or the instrumental, "experience"-based outlook of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The skepticism of the Legal Realists or the "judicial self-restraint" counseled by those looking to "neutral principles" and "legal process" or the "fundamental rights" espoused by those seeking more normative values in the law—no school of legal philosophy can be considered dead. Postmodernists resist the idea that "there is a 'real' world or legal system 'out there,' perfected, formed, complete and coherent, waiting to be discovered by theory." In law, postmodern criticism has come to represent two dominant perspectives. Another group of postmodern critics, the ironists, attempt to facilitate the crisis and fragmentation of modern theory by employing postmodern criticism to "displace, decenter, and weaken" central concepts of modern legal Western thought. Perhaps the current postmodern condition is part of a historically anxious, contingent moment.
