Question

According to Realists:

• A. Custom is real law
• B. Precedent is real law
• C. Statute is real law
• D. Rule is real law

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

The Correct Option is (B): Precedent is real law.

Answer 2

The question asks what the Legal Realist school treats as the real law, as opposed to the law found in statute books or formal rule statements. Reviewing the core realist claim against each option answers this.

1. Custom is real law: custom is treated as a historical or sociological source of law by many jurisprudential schools, but it is not the Realists' central claim, Realists are focused specifically on what courts actually do in practice, not on customary practices among the population.
2. Precedent is real law: American Legal Realists, building on Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous line that law is the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, argue that the written rule on paper is less important than how courts actually decide cases. What judges have actually decided, and are likely to decide again, in other words precedent and judicial behaviour, is what Realists treat as the operative, real law that lawyers and citizens should care about.
3. Statute is real law: this is closer to the formalist or strict positivist view that treats the enacted text as binding law in itself, exactly the paper rules approach Realists were reacting against, arguing instead that what matters is how courts apply and sometimes depart from that text.
4. Rule is real law: treating an abstract stated rule as the real law is again the formalist position Realism challenges, Realists are sceptical that stated rules alone predict outcomes, since judicial behaviour and case specific factors often diverge from the rule as written.

The Realist movement's defining move is to shift attention away from rules and statutes on paper and toward what courts actually decide, which is why precedent, the record of actual judicial decisions, is what they call real law.

So the correct answer is Precedent is real law.