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The Possibilities and Perils of Legal Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Neil Sargent
Neil Sargent
Affiliation:
Department of Law, Carleton University
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Abstract

The paper explores the possibilities and perils of an interdisciplinary approach to legal studies emerging as an alternative intellectual paradigm to the doctrinal tradition within legal scholarship. The privileged status accorded to the doctrinal tradition within the legal academy is sustained by its continued importance in providing a link between law as a field of intellectual inquiry and law as a field of professional practice. Despite the promise of a more pluralistic intellectual climate within the legal academy, it seems unlikely that an interdisciplinary approach to legal studies will succeed in challenging the preeminence of legal doctrine as the primary source of professional-knowledge claims about law. At the same time, however, any attempt to claim legal studies as a separate field of intellectual inquiry outside the legal academy confronts many of the same doubts about the nature of law as a unitary object of knowledge as the doctrinal tradition from which it seeks to distance itself. The paradox of the legal studies project is that whenever it tries to free itself from the embrace of the doctrinal tradition, it confronts epistemological doubts about the conditions for its own existence. It appears, therefore, that the legal studies project is destined to continue its labours in the shadow of the law.

Résumé

L'auteur examine ici, les possibilités et les risques d'une approche interdisciplinaire de l'analyse critique du droit comme paradigme intellectuel alternatif à la tradition doctrinale au sein de la réflexion juridique. Le statut privilégié accordé à la tradition doctrinale dans les facultés de droit est soutenu par l'importance persistante du lien qu'elle établit entre le droit comme champ d'investigation intellectuelle et le droit comme champ professionnel. Malgré la promesse d'un climat intellectuel plus pluraliste à l'intérieur des facultés de droit, il semble que l'approche inlerdisciplinaire de l'analyse critique du droit ait très peu de chances de remplacer la doctrine comme source première de l'acquisition des connaissances professionnelles en droit. Cependant, toute tentative visant à considérer l'analyse critique du droit comme un champ d'investigation intellectuelle indépendant des facultés de droit soulèvera un grand nombre de questions concernant la nature du droit considéré comme objet de savoir unitaire par la tradition doctrinale dont elle cherche à se distancier. Le paradoxe du projet d'analyse critique du droit réside dans le fait qu' à chaque fois que l'on essaie de le détacher de la tradition doctrinale, on le confronte à des doutes épistémologiques reliés aux conditions de sa propre existence. Il semble donc que les travaux du projet d'analyse critique du droit soient condamnés à se poursuivre dans l'ombre du droit.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 6 , 1991 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1991

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