ABSTRACT
Edward Levi was a child of the University of Chicago. Levi's central concerns were with the legal process, not with political outcomes. His Introduction to Legal Reasoning still remains the best short description of the common law method. Levi was thus socially as well as intellectually a part of the "realist" movement centered at Yale, which sought to adapt the law to changed conditions through empirical study of them. Levi's writing was always elliptical, and potentially controversial and unpopular passages were heavily masked and aimed at specialized and discerning audiences. In this way, Levi avoided compromising his intellectual honesty; he also avoided any resemblance to a tribune of the people. Levi's contribution was not economic orthodoxy but emphasis on the mutability and cyclicity of antitrust doctrines. Levi was too broad-minded to be an enthusiastic member of any school of legal thought, even one of which he is popularly deemed the co-founder.
