It is worthwhile repeating, however, that the empirical assessment that the Realists have urged may in fact turn out for some courts and some issues and some types of law to be less inconsistent with the traditional view of law than most of the early Realists imagined. It may well be, for example, that the principal determinant of judicial decisions on questions of statutory interpretation is the ordinary meaning of the words of the relevant statute, and that the chief determinant on questions of contract law in appellate cases is the traditional rules and principles and doctrines of contract law as found in conventional contracts casebooks and in treatises like Corbin and Williston. Such outcomes would have surprised the Realists, but such traditional legal explanations for judicial outcomes may well be sound for some or many domains, and the very fact of taking this to be an empirical question is, in the largest sense, perhaps the most important feature and legacy of the Realist program.

Unknown, Frederick Schauer - Thinkin…, loc. 259