At the outset of Legal Intellectuals in Conversation, James Hackney reminds us that the 1980s were “an extraordinary period in American legal theory.” In that decade, “ideas [were] flying around from .... an array of theoretical positions” and “movements [were] formed and intellectual battles waged.” To recapture and account for this heady decade, which “laid down” the “theoretical tracks we navigate today and will traverse into the future,” Hackney wrote Legal Intellectuals to “provide a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that so animated ... the legal academy ... in the 1980s” (1–2).
The “firsthand account” comes somewhat from Hackney, who was a law student during the period, but mostly from interviews he conducted with ten of the era's “academic stars” (ix). Each “star” was a leader of one of the decade's major theoretical perspectives. In Legal Intellectuals, Hackney publishes the ten interviews with a short introduction that sketches the history of legal theory in American university-based law schools, discusses the confluence of developments that brought about the explosion of theorizing in the 1980s, and describes the diverse theoretical perspectives represented by the interviewees.
Hackney's ten interlocutors, and the movements they represent, are: Duncan Kennedy, critical legal studies; Richard Posner, law and economics; Morton Horwitz, legal history; Austin Sarat, law and society; Patricia Williams, critical race theory; Catherine MacKinnon, feminist legal theory; Drucilla Cornell, postmodern legal theory; Bruce Ackerman, contemporary liberal constitutional theory; Charles Fried, classical liberal constitutional theory; and Jules Coleman, law and philosophy.
As Hackney observes, the interview format is more frequently the métier of the journalist than the academic. However, Hackney chose it for his project believing “[t]here is a presentness, spontaneity, and humanity in an interview that cannot be duplicated in exposition” (3). Whether or not Hackney is correct that an interview uniquely captures these expository qualities, Legal Intellectuals' interviews certainly do. From start to finish, Legal Intellectuals is a lively and engaging read.
Legal Intellectuals is an informative book that should appeal to anyone interested in late twentieth century legal theory or the life and work of the professors Hackney interviewed. In this regard, Legal Intellectuals would be more useful if it were annotated. Hackney's interviews raise, but of necessity only touch upon, a myriad complex ideas. Many times, I found myself wishing for references to an article or book that more fully plumbed (or critiqued) what Hackney's “star” was talking about. I am not one who believes that a lively book is weighed down by footnotes. Especially as time passes and readers grow less familiar with the viewpoints discussed in Legal Intellectuals, an annotated edition would preserve, rather than inhibit, Legal Intellectuals' ability to communicate freshly and fully.
Legal Intellectuals also is valuable as an oral history of the intellectual ferment of the 1980s' legal academy. As Hackney acknowledges, Legal Intellectuals provides only partial coverage of the cornucopia of theories that were part of the period's discussions. There are no interviewees who speak for originalism, textualism, empirical legal studies, law and literature, or law and emotion. These omitted approaches to law would seem to require discussion, if only because they have grown in influence while a fair number of the discussed schools have faded. Nonetheless, Hackney has created an important primary source for subsequent research on the 1980s' intellectual ferment.
Synthesizing new insights about the history of an era from ten separate interviews is a difficult undertaking; however, drawing from responses to some common questions he sprinkled into the interviews, Hackney attempts to do so. Several of Hackney's interviewees say that since the 1980s they have shifted away from their original theoretic positions toward “neopragmatism.” But what is meant by that ambiguous term is nowhere specified; and by themselves, the interviews are insufficient to support Hackney's stark assertion that “[w]e might correctly dub this moment in legal academe the era of neopragmatism” (16).
Also, in his introduction and subsequent conversation with each interviewee, Hackney suggests an answer to the question “why did these heady times end?" According to Hackney, the legal academy's turn, in the 1980s, toward “increasingly interdisciplinary and theoretical” work (16) initiated a trend toward “a proliferation of Ph.D-qualified legal academics” and “specialization” (15). Specialization promoted a trend away from speaking “across the legal academy and beyond” (16) and toward debates that are “waged within relatively narrow subdisciplines that are ‘interdisciplinary’ but scarcely affect the larger academic community” (16).
Surely there is more to the demise of the 1980s' intellectual excitement that this, but in response to Hackney's questions, the only interviewee to add an additional explanation was Morton Horwitz, who pointed to an academy-wide retreat from recognizing law's intimate connection with politics.
In addressing the demise of the 1980s ferment, Legal Intellectuals raises an important issue that is the subject of ongoing research. When the history of the shift from the dynamic 1980s to the quiescent 2000s is more fully understood, Legal Intellectuals will not be seen as having hit upon much of the answer, but it is among the sources that scholars must consult in seeking it.
