New Legal Realism's Rejoinder

This rejoinder responds to criticisms by Jan Klabbers and Ino Augsberg of 'The New Legal Realist Approach to International Law' (Leiden Journal of International Law, Volume 28: 2, 2015). The New Legal Realism brings together empirical and pragmatic perspectives in order to build theory regarding how law obtains meaning, is practised, and changes over time. In contrast with conceptualists, such as Augsberg, legal realists do not accept the priority of concepts over facts, but rather stress the interaction of concepts with experience in shaping law's meaning and practice. Klabbers, as a legal positivist, questions the value of the turn to empirical work and asks whether it is a fad. This rejoinder contends that the New Legal Realism has deep jurisprudential roots in Europe and the United States, constituting a third stream of jurisprudence involving the development of sociolegal theory, in complement with, but not opposed to, analytic and normative theory.