Getting Real About Realism

Is the dominance of Legal Realism an obstacle for the Catholic legal theory project, or does Legal Realism simply represent a more accurate portrayal of law-making than the formalist alternative?  Brian Tamanaha tries to set the record straight about Realism by contrasting the Realists with the Crits.  Here's an excerpt:

There is a fundamental reason why is wrong to see the Realists as early day Crits: the Realists believed in the law (keeping in mind that this was an amorphous and disparate group). Their goal was to improve the law. Llewellyn professed his love for the law and his pride in being a lawyer. One could hardly be more un-Critly (to coin an ugly neologism) than that. No Crit would have drafted the Uniform Commercial Code to match business practices—which Llewellyn did with great satisfaction. Moreover, while several Realists were New Dealers, their overarching emphasis on enhancing the efficiency of law and on making the law conform more closely to ongoing social behavior had a deeply conservative thrust—again, most un-Critly.