For that, they should be applauded. In Minding the Law , Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability.
Most law professors teach by the 'case method,' or say they do.
Reading this book will undoubtedly make one a better lawyer, and teacher of lawyers. Levinson, author of Constitutional Faith Tony Amsterdam, the leader in the legal campaign against the death penalty, and Jerome Bruner, who has struggled for equal justice in education for forty years, have written a guide to demystifying legal reasoning. Columbia Law School Anthony G. Amsterdam is Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and has been a MacArthur Fellow.