Kalman, Laura. Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. xii, 314 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-203-4. Cloth. $95.

* The history of the concept of legal realism as it evolved at Yale University Law School is in fact a history of the development of legal education in this country during the years 1927-1960, as Kalman shows in this important study. The realists' attention toward the importance of the role of litigation, the practitioner, judges and judicial reasoning, and the judiciary in a societal context represented a departure from the scientific casebook method espoused by C.C. Langdell at Harvard University Law School in the 1870s, and later supported by Roscoe Pound.