contemporary pragmatism 15 (2018) 515-524 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/18758185-01501124 brill.com/copr A Different Legal Conservatism Luke Philip Plotica Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech, USA luke.plotica@vt.edu Abstract In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and practical affinities between classical (especially Peircean) pragmatism and conservatism. Characterizing both as essentially methods rather than ideologies, he argues that the two ought to be understood as mutually supportive and corrective, and that they conjointly supply an especially robust set of intellectual resources rel- evant to contemporary moral, political, and legal concerns. This essay critically exam- ines Vannatta’s marriage of conservatism and pragmatism in the realm of legal theory. It argues that while Vannatta’s work provides a rigorous pragmatist alternative to the familiar legal formalism adopted by many American conservatives, its foundations may be narrower than Vannatta appreciates and the resulting theory may have little necessary connection to the dispositional, methodological conservatism upon which it is purportedly based. Keywords conservatism – formalism – legal theory – originalism – realism As somewhat of an outsider to pragmatist and neo-pragmatist circles, I have often been struck by the sense that pragmatism—as developed by its so-called classical exponents, such as Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey— appears committed to no political or legal ideology and yet serviceable to a great many substantive political and legal projects. Dewey, to take just one example, had clear and emphatic progressive, democratic political commit- ments, but his larger philosophical vision does not seem to entail his precise political values and views (though it surely counsels in favor of an open- textured democratic mentality). Pragmatism’s characteristic responsiveness to