No Litmus Test

The term "litmus test," as used in American political discussion of judicial opponents, is well understood as a coded term referring to the issue of abortion, but less well understood is how the term reveals a wider conceptual debate about the extent to which judges issuing judgments engage in a distinctly legal as opposed to political task. Dorf (law, Columbia U. School of Law) takes a position between the realists--who argue that law is essentially nothing more than politics--and the formalists--who believe it is possible to hew 100% to formal written texts--in his argument for the "partial autonomy of the law." According to this view the concerns of law often overlap with those of other disciplines, but the insights of those other disciplines must be translated and integrated into the autonomous tools and methods of the law's own language. He applies this formulation to critique of a number of issues and cases, from abortion to the legality of the invasion of Iraq. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University School of Law. He is the editor of Constitutional Law Stories (2004) and coauthor, with Laurence H. Tribe, of On Reading the Constitution (1991). He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (1991-1992) and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1990-1991).