Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:34:40.158Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The antinomies of legal theory: An introductory survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Peter Goodrich
Peter Goodrich*
Affiliation:
Liverpool Polytechnic
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Any discipline or body of knowledge operates within the confines of a set of criteria as to what constitutes its object and equally as to how that object is to be known. The two sets of criteria, of object and method, are obviously interrelated. How we know an object is in large part constitutive of what that object is taken to be. At the same time, if there is in some sense an object external to how we come to know it, this presupposed or preconstructed object is going to act as a powerful limit upon what can be knowledge of it, without at some point transgressing the boundaries of the common sense of the object. There comes a point, in other words, when divergent statements are no longer concerned with the same object. It is my contention here that positivist jurisprudence, a certain tradition of statements about what law ‘is’, has already arrived at this point.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1973, Chicago) pp. 89, 92Google Scholar.

2. For the debate over the applicability of Kuhn's notion of paradigm change to the natural sciences, cf Lakatos, and Musgrove, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970, CUP)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also Bhaskar, R. A Realist Theory of Science (1975, Leeds)Google Scholar.

3. This process is well depicted in Mathieson, T. Law, Society and Political Action (1980, Academic Press) Ch. 5Google Scholar. See also his earlier work, Mathieson, T. The Politics of Abolition (1974, Martin Robertson) pp. 11–28 Google Scholar.

4. Edelman, B. The Ownership of the Image (1980, RKP) p. 24 Google Scholar.

5. Foucault, M. The Archaelogy of Knowledge (1972) pp. 64–71 Google Scholar.

6. Carlen, P. and Burton, F. Official Discourse (1979, RKP)Google Scholar and Therborn, G. The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (1980, Verso)Google Scholar.

7. Pashukanis, E. B. Law and Marxism (1978, London)Google Scholar.

8. Kelsen, H. The Communist Theory of Law (1976, Aalen)Google Scholar.

9. Ibid. p. vii.

10. Ibid. p. 89.

11. Ibid. p. 93.

12. Pashukanis, E. B. op. cit. p. 52 Google Scholar.

13. Ibid. p. 53.

14. See especially Hirst, P. Q. On Law and Ideology (1979, MacMillan)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also of relevance is Bankowski, Z. K. ‘Marxism, Anarchism and the Critique of Law’ (1981) Law and Contemporary problems Vol 1 Google Scholar.

15. Colletti, L. From Rousseau to Lenin (1969, London) p. 11 Google Scholar.

16. Kelsen, H. op. cit. p. 153 Google Scholar.

17. Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations (1953, Blackwell)Google Scholar. Hart also refers to Winch, P. The Idea of a Social Science (1958, RKP)Google Scholar. I shall not here discuss J. L. Austin. For a discussion of this genealogy in a different context, see MacCormick, D. N. H. L. A. Hart (1981, Arnold) Ch. 1Google Scholar.

18. Hart, H. L. A. Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence (1953, OUP)Google Scholar and, Hart, H.L.A. The Concept of Law (1961, Clarendon) pp. 234, 239Google Scholar.

19. Gellner, E. Thought and Change (1964, London) Ch. 8Google Scholar. Cf also Gellner, E. Words and Things (1980, RKP)Google Scholar.

20. D. N. MacCormick ‘Challenging Sociological Definitions’ (1977) BJLS 89.

21. Campbell, C. and Wiles, P. The study of Law and Society in Britain’ (1976) 16 Google Scholar LS Review 847.

22. MacCormick, D. N. op. cit. p. 90 Google Scholar.

23. Ibid. p. 93.

24. In relation, for instance, to Bankowski, and Mungham, Images of Law (1976, RKP)Google Scholar which is frequently cited.

25. Gellner, E. Thought and Change pp. 185–186 Google Scholar.

26. MacCormick, D. N. op. cit. p. 90 Google Scholar.

27. Ibid. p. 93.

28. Winch, P. op. cit. pp. 57–62, 95–136Google Scholar. For D. N. MacCormick's position see, MacCormick, D. N. Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978, Clarendon) esp. pp. 275–293 Google Scholar.

29. Winch, P. op. cit. p. 108 Google Scholar.

30. MacCormick, D. N. also refers to Bauman, Z. Hermeneutics and Social Science (1970, London)Google Scholar; and to Gadamer, H.: Truth and Method (1975, New York)Google Scholar, as well as to earlier, theological and legal traditions. In none of these references does MacCormick make it clear what the status of the hermeneutic method he envisages should be taken to be. A close reading of his H. L. A. Hart (supra), his most recent statement, suggests a mixture of a behaviourist position - the internal viewpoint is determined in the last instance by the form of life - and a subjectivist position - the somewhat vague sentiment that society is a society of persons, that it cannot be wrong to be anthropomorphic about human beings - which latter insight he takes to be the exclusive truth of liberalism.

31. A claim, incidentally, which Wittgenstein himself was not prepared to make, cf Philosophical Investigation (supra) para. 65.

32. For a strong formulation of this position see, MacCormick, D. N. H. L. A. Hart pp. 37–38 Google Scholar.

33. Cf, for example, Fine et al (eds) Capitalism and the Rule of Law (1979, Hutchinson), or Kinsey ‘Marxism and the Law: preliminary analyses’ (1978) BJLS Vol 5, p. 202.

34. Kinsey, R. ibid pp. 216–218 Google Scholar.

35. See P. Q. Hirst op. cit. and also his introduction to B. Edelman Ownership of the Image (supra).

36. Carlen, P. and Burton, F. Official Discourse on discourse analysis, government publications, ideology and the state (1979, RKP)Google Scholar.

37. The concept of discourse analysis was popularised in France by Foucault, M. The Archaeology of Knowledge (supra), while another useful early work is Pecheux, M. Analyse Automatique du discours (1969, Dunod)Google Scholar. For a useful survey of more recent developments in this field see Kalinowski, et Landowski, La recherche en sciences humaines 1979–1980 (1981, Editions de CNRS) pp. 125–129 Google Scholar. Also useful is Ducrot, O. and Todorov, T. Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language (1981, Blackwell)Google Scholar.

38. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1966, London)Google Scholar.

39. Derrida, J. Of Grammatology (1976, John Hopkins University Press) pp. 138–139 Google Scholar.

40. Derrida, J. Writing and Difference (1978, RKP) pp. 285 and 288Google Scholar.

41. Perhaps the best treatment of the theoretical difficulties in the path of discourse analysis is Pecheux, M. Language, Semantics and Ideology (1982, MacMillan)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which I have reviewed in, Goodrich, P. ‘Materialism and Linguistics’ (1982) Radical Philosophy 32 Google Scholar.

42. One of the more interesting treatments is, A small history of rhetoric, in Eagleton, T. Walter Benjamin (1981, Verso)Google Scholar. Also of interest is Grassi, E. Philosophy as Rhetoric (1980, Pennsylvania UP)Google Scholar.

43. See the excellent study by Ricoeur, P. The Rule of Metaphor (1978, RKP)Google Scholar and also, Culler, J. The Pursuit of signs (1981, RKP) esp. Ch. 10Google Scholar.

44. See Ch. Perelman et Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. Rhetorigue et Philosophie (1952, PUF)Google Scholar and more recently Perelman, Ch. Logique Juridique, Nouvelle Rhetorigue (1976, Dalloz)Google Scholar.

45. Ibid p. 56.

46. Carlen, P. and Burton, F. op. cit. p. 70 Google Scholar.

47. Ibid p. 127.

48. Ibid pp. 132–133.

49. Ibid p. 135.

50. Mathieson, T. Politics of Abolition (supra) p. 18 Google Scholar.

51. Edelman, B. Ownership of the Image (supra) p. 25 Google Scholar.

52. Nietzsche, F. The Dawn of Day (1903, London)Google Scholar aphorism 444. My thanks in particular to Cosmo Graham and to Neil MacCormick for criticisms and encouragement in relation to an earlier draft of this paper.