ABSTRACT
Why have legal theorists have shown such great interest in Rorty’s pragmatism? Does Rorty have a jurisprudence? Rorty actually wrote very little about law, though when he did, it was both provocative and problematic. This article seeks to examine a Rortian jurisprudence and defend it from critics. It argues that while Rorty appears to advocate a reckless “visionary” approach to the law, his endorsement of Robert Brandom’s and Richard Posner’s respective versions of pragmatism temper the radicality of his jurisprudence. It concludes that the key to Rortian jurisprudence is not a legal theory that definitively determines the law, but rather a conception of pragmatic virtues possessed by broadly educated and creative legal problem-solvers.
