What is the value, if any, of legal formalism? Formalism is a self-determining system that states: To reach the most appropriate conclusion, judges must look to existing legal bodies and engage in purely mechanical deduction to produce individual correct results. However, the impracticality of this system nullifies the value of formalism as the principle does not always adapt to the facts. Formalists strongly believe that the answers are already present in the law. They believe that judges must look at existing legal bodies with limited judicial discretion to reach the correct conclusion. It is also believed that it is not necessary to consider external non-legal factors, such as the moral beliefs of judges or the current political climate and Herman Pritchett continued throughout the 19th century and his hold eventually broke, thanks to the efforts of Oliver Wendell Holmes , Benjamin N. Cardozo and the Legal Realists. The main desire of legal realists was to find out how judicial decisions were reached in reality and, in pursuit of this, they criticized the value of formalism and claimed that in reality not every answer to every case is already present in the law. For example, in Dolan v Corby, when the judge confused the Family Law Act 1996 when considering whether to make an occupation order, he had exercised his discretion and therefore the resulting order could not be quashed. This shows that not all answers to the cases are already present in the law, since in this case the judges used their discretion to overturn these legislative provisions. Realists rebelled against the mechanical model of courts and judges, arguing instead that legal decisions were a “mixture of law, politics, and politics” and that judges' decisions were influenced by their background, training, personality, and ideology. Legal realists in political science were concerned with judicial behavior and judicial decision making, not just legal structures