Political Science and Science Fiction

Extract

I want to dissent initially from the rather constricting frame of reference that Schubert has established in his paper. He has every right in the world to set rhetorical snares, but I have no intention of walking into them. If I may summarize, Schubert asserts that he is a spokesman for a radical new direction in the study of public law, claiming that the old ways are moribund. He further urges that we should look with envy at the creative function of the social psychologists who supplied the Supreme Court with the banners it carried in Brown v. Board of Education while we were bumbling around with historical and philosophical trivia. He concludes that instead of wasting our time with talmudic disputations on whether the Supreme Court reached the “right” or the “wrong” decisions in specific cases, we should settle down to build a firm “scientific” foundation for our discipline.

Not the least amusing aspect of this indictment is that I find myself billed as the defender of the ancien régime, as the de Maistre of public law. Therefore, for the benetfit of the young and impressionistic, let me break loose from Schubert's rhetorical trap: I too think that much of the research done in public law—and, for that matter, in political science generally—has been trivial.