My latest attempt at exorcising C.C. Langdell's tenacious ghost is now in print: "Langdell & the Eclipse of Character." I've been trying to dispel this specter for years. https://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/ojs/lawreview/article/view/1001/643
Excerpt from Conclusion: "I will not conclude by calling Langdell a confidence man. I will, however, conclude with a few words from Melville’s THE CONFIDENCE MAN. As Melville reminds us: the false cannot plausibly overclaim perfection. For example, ‘[T]he best false teeth are those made with at least two or three blemishes, the more to look like life.’ A legal formalism which claims mathematical certainty (and which further denies the importance of the slings and arrows of substantial law practice for the law professor) does not even pretend to look like life. Were Langdellianism a con, it could therefore not be a plausible one, and those duped by it should be all the more ashamed . . . ."
