PHILOSOPHER PROFILES

FRIEDRICH KARL VON SAVIGNY

GERMAN JURIST AND HISTORIAN

Friedrich Karl von Savigny, (born February 21, 1779, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died October 25, 1861, Berlin, Prussia), German jurist and legal scholar
who was one of the founders of the influential “historical school” of jurisprudence. He advocated that the meaning and content of existing bodies of law
be analyzed through research into their historical origins and modes of transformation.

Savigny viewed law as a slow, almost imperceptible growth that is formed in much the same way as a language is. Accordingly, legislation and law codes
can, at most, give mere verbal expression to a body of existing law whose meaning and content can only be discovered by careful historical
investigations. Historical jurisprudence opposed not only attempts at codification but also those rationalist thinkers who sought to derive legal theories from
general and universal principles without respect to the characteristics and customs of a particular people. Savigny sought rather to uncover the content
of existing law through historical research.

In 1815, shortly after the appearance of this epochal pamphlet, he founded, together with K.F. Eichorn and J.F.L. Göschen, the Zeitschrift für geschichtliche
Rechtswissenschaft (“Journal of Historical Jurisprudence”), which became the organ of the new historical school of jurisprudence. In the same year, he
began publishing his Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter (1815–31; “History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages”). This monumental work, in
which Savigny used rigorous critical techniques and consulted a vast body of primary sources, became the foundation of the modern study of medieval
law.

WILLIAM JAMES
FATHER OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY

Often referred to as 'The Father of American Psychology,' William James was one of the first prominent American psychologists. His ideas on how the
human mind functions led to his development and influence on the budding field of psychology here in the United States.

Pragmatism and Functionalism

William James' lectures, writings and theories were organized around the dual principles of functionalism and pragmatism.

Functionalism considers thought and behavior in terms of how they help a person adapt to their environment. In other words, how they help a person
'function' in the world and be successful. The functional approach was a response to prevailing structuralist approaches in psychology that broke down
abstract mental events into their smallest elements through experimental techniques and introspection. Structuralists believed that the parts of the brain
acted the same in any circumstance, whereas James was much more interested in its functional adaptability.

James was also active in the world of philosophy and his ideas of Pragmatism reflected his fundamental perspective. The basic assumption of pragmatism
is that the abstract 'truth' of an idea can never be fully proven and so philosophy should instead focus on the usefulness of an idea, or the difference they
can make in people's lives. James called this the 'cash value' of an idea.

As James developed these views, he moved away from scientific, experimental approaches to psychology, towards a more philosophical approach. His
writing is notable for its engaging, accessible, humorous, literary, and almost conversational tone. It was said of his book Principles of Psychology (1890), 'It
is literature. It is beautiful, but it is not psychology.'

JUDGE RICHARD POSNER

Richard A. Posner was born on January 11, 1939, in New York City, and grew up in New York and its suburbs. He graduated from Yale College in 1959,
summa cum laude, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year; he was an English major and a Scholar of the House. He graduated first in his
class from Harvard Law School in 1962, magna cum laude, and was President of the Harvard Law Review. He worked for several years in Washington
during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations—as law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., as an assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal
Trade Commission, as an assistant to the Solicitor General of the U.S., Thurgood Marshall, and as general counsel of President Johnson’s Task Force on
Communications Policy.

Posner entered law teaching in 1968 at Stanford as an associate professor, and became professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School in 1969,
where he remained (later as Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law) until his appointment to the Seventh Circuit in 1981. During this period Posner wrote
a number of books (including Antitrust Law: An Economic Perspective, Economic Analysis of Law—now in its fifth edition—and The Economics of Justice)
and many articles (a number of these in collaboration with the economist William Landes), mainly exploring the application of economics to a variety of
legal subjects, including antitrust, public utility and common carrier regulation, torts, contracts, and procedure. He called for major reforms in antitrust
policy, proposed and sought to test the theory that the common law is best explained as if the judges were trying to promote economic efficiency, urged
wealth maximization as a goal of legal and social policy, contributed to the economic theory of regulation and legislation, and extended the economic
analysis of law into fields new to such analysis, such as family law, primitive law, racial discrimination, jurisprudence, and privacy. He founded the Journal
of Legal Studies, primarily to encourage economic analysis of law, and was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also
engaged in private consulting and was from 1977 to 1981 the first president of Lexecon Inc., a firm made up of lawyers and economists that provides
economic and legal research and support in antitrust, securities, and other litigation.

JEREMY BENTHAM
BRITISH PHILOSOPHER AND ECONOMIST

Jeremy Bentham, (born February 15, 1748, London, England—died June 6, 1832, London), English philosopher, economist, and theoretical jurist, the earliest
and chief expounder of utilitarianism.

Legal formalism is a legal positivist view in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. While Jeremy Bentham's legal positivism can be seen as appertaining to
the legislature, legal formalism appertains to the Judge; that is, formalism does not (as positivists do) suggest that the substantive justice of a law is
irrelevant, but rather, that in a democracy, that is a question for the legislature to address, not the Judge.

PHILIP BOBBIT

Philip C. Bobbitt is the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence and director for the Center for National Security at Columbia Law School. He is
one of the nation’s leading constitutional theorists.