A gainst Method 59

Minda, Postmodern Legal Movements(New York : New York University Press , 1995), 13-16; and Robert S. Summers , Instrumentalism and American Legal Theory(Ithaca NY : Cornell University Press , 1982), 1374"

5. Thomas C. Grey,“Langdell’s Orthodoxy,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 45(1983), 1-53

6. See, in general, the works cited in note 4. The attack on formalism has assumed a number of different names: legal realism, legal skepticism, instrumentalism, legal pragmatism, critical legal theory, and others. In their more radical manifestations, these approaches conceive of“law” as nothing more than politics(or sociology, or ideology, or economics, or ethics) conducted by legal officials, so that“legal decision” as a separate and distinct mode of thought does not exist and that“law” as such does not formally constrain the choice of the decision maker. Not-so­radical versions of these approaches concede that logic and formal reasoning do play a role in law and judicial decision but that they do not dictate the outcome in some deductive or mechanical way.

7. Ihave lifted the title of this essay from Paul Feyerabend , Against Method(Revised edition. London : Verso, 1988). Feyerabend claims that the scientific method, which almost everyone thinks of as the sine qua non of true scientific research, in fact stultifies and limits the creativity of researchers. The best results, he argues, have always been obtained by scientific“anarchists” who followed their own lights to important discoveries. Whether Feyerabend is right or wrong about the desirability of renouncing“method” in the hard sciences is a controversial subject into which I am certainly not qualified to intervene. I do think, though, that his insights apply with telling force to inquiry in the social sciences, humanities, law, and-by extension-halakhah.

8. On this topic, see J. David Bleich , Contemporary Halakhic Problems, Volume 3(New York : Ktav/Yeshiva, 1989), 91, at note 6; Joel Roth , The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis(New York : Jewish Theological Seminary , 1986), 71-74; and Mark Washofsky, “Responsa and the Art of Writing,” in Peter S. Knobel and Mark N. Staitman, eds., 4n American Rabbinate: A Festschrift for Walter Jacob(Pittsburgh : Rodef Shalom Press, 2000), at 175-177.

9. Hagufa kashya: the term“Zionist halakhah™ may seem to embody an internal contradiction. Halakhah , after all, symbolizes the old, established forms of Jewish life and behavior, while Zionism constituted a veritable revolution in Jewish self-definition.(That Zionism is legitimately described as a“revolution” is a commonplace in Zionist thought and historiography. See Arthur Hertzberg , ed., The Zionist Idea[New York : Atheneum, 1975], 16; Shelomo Avineri, Hara'ayon Hatziyoni Legevanav[Tel Aviv : Am Oved, 1985], 13-24; and David Vital, Hamahapechah Hatziyonit, vols. 1-3[Tel Aviv : Am Oved, 1978-1991]. Yet is should be recalled that“Orthodox Zionism, ” the movement from which these halakhic writings gushed forth, was also a revolutionary departure from much traditional Jewish religious thought and experience. There is, of course, a wealth of literature on the history and ideology of Orthodox Zionism . See, in general, Yosef Tirosh: Religious Zionism: An Anthology(Jerusalem : World