Richard Hyland (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – Rutgers Law School) has posted Common Law Judging and the Great Tradition (Springer Nature 2026) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Many other books also wrestle with the question this book explores: How do judges decide cases in the American common law? But this is no ordinary law book.
And here is the abstract of the book’s opening chapter (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0):
This book explores how common law judges decide cases. Since judges rarely speak about what they do, we will seek guidance from a dozen of the common law’s great books. These books agree that cases are not decided solely by applying rules to facts. But if rules alone do not decide cases, how are cases decided? Judges are guided by factors independent of their individual preferences, and it is the goal of this book to examine what those factors might be.
Common law case method is based on precedent—the elaboration of rules from the holdings of earlier cases. Though judges consider prior decisions, our notable books suggest that they also take other facts and concerns into account. These books describe neither how judges actually decide cases nor how they should go about it. They portray instead the dilemma of judging.
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