ABSTRACT
In conveying the drama of Abraham Edel’s evolving philosophy of law from his first article in 1938 through two papers written for the World Congress of Legal and Social Philosophy in recent years, the author points that Edel has presented a mature American development of the Anglo-American mainstream: legal positivism. Invoking pragmatism as a way of analysis Edel demonstrates its fruitfulness and hospitality to diverse perspectives. Edel examines three sets of polarities: the law teacher and the practitioner; the moralist and the bad man; the entrenched and oppressed. First, the traditional professor of law aims at a manageable field of study centering in rules of law. Second, the moralist and the bad man do not turn out to be, as one might expect, the preacher and the crook. Edels third antithesis is law from the point of view of the established and the underprivileged.
