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New Legal Realism, Empiricism, and Scientism: The Relative Objectivity of Law and Social Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

ANDREW LANG
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Abstract

In this article, I suggest that one of the central characteristics of New Legal Realism is the productive tension between empiricist and pragmatist theories of knowledge which lies at its core. On one side, new realist work in its empiricist posture seeks to use empirical knowledge of the world as the basis on which to design, interpret, apply, and criticize the law. On the other, in its pragmatist moments, it explicitly draws attention to the social and political contingency of any claims to empirical knowledge of the world, including its own. As a consequence, it is distinctive of much scholarship in the New Legal Realist vein that it continually enacts creative syntheses of different philosophies of truth in an attempt to be, in Shaffer's words, ‘positivist . . . interpretivist, and legal realist all at once’. The first part of this article draws on existing historical accounts of legal realism briefly to trace the problematic and ambiguous place of scientism in the legal realist tradition. Then, in the second and more important part of the article, I argue that the ambivalence of the legal realists’ vision has left us, in certain contexts, with a complicated form of mixed legal-scientific governance which has proved remarkably and surprisingly resilient in the face of late twentieth century critiques of scientific objectivity. This may be one of the most enduring legacies of the ‘old’ legal realists for those today who work in the New Legal Realist vein.

Keywords

empirical legal scholarshipNew Legal RealismSPS agreementsubsidiesWorld Trade Organization
Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY: International Law and its Methodology
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 231 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2015 

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References

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9 Ibid.

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14 Ibid.

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16 Ibid.

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50 Appellate Report Canada – Certain Measures Affecting the Renewable Energy Sector; Canada –Measures Relating to the Feed-in Tariff Program, adopted 24 May 2013, AB-2013-1, WT/DS412/AB/R; WT/DS426/AB/R (hereinafter Canada – FIT).

51 Ibid., at para. 5.174.

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53 Appellate Report United States – Subsidies on Upland Cotton Recourse to Article 21.5 of the DSU by Brazil, adopted 20 June 2008, AB-2008-2, WT/DS267/AB/RW, at para. 356 (citations omitted).

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57 EC – Large Civil Aircraft, supra note 55, at para. 1045.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., at para. 1047.

61 See, e.g., L. Rubini, ‘What Does the Recent WTO Litigation on Renewable Energy Subsidies Tell Us about Methodology in Legal Analysis? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, (2014) EUI Working Paper 2014/05.

62 Canada – FIT, supra note 50, at para. 5.185.

63 Ibid., at para. 5.190. See also Panel Report Canada – Certain Measures Affecting the Renewable Energy General Sector, Canada – Measures Relating to the Feed-in Tariff Program, adopted 24 May 2013, WT/DS412/R, WT/DS426/R, at paras. 7.308–313.

64 Panel Report Brazil – Export Financing Programme for Aircraft, adopted 20 August 1999, WT/DS46/R, at paras. 7.21–2.

65 Ibid., paras. 7.24–5.

66 Ibid., para. 7.25.

67 Appellate Report Brazil – Export Financing Programme for Aircraft, adopted 20 August 1999, AB-1999-1, WT/DS46/AB/R, at para. 182.

68 Panel Report Brazil – Export Financing Programme for Aircraft Recourse by Canada to Article 21.5 of the DSU, adopted 4 August 2000, WT/DS46/RW, at para. 6.84 and surrounding.

69 Appellate Report Brazil – Export Financing Programme for Aircraft Recourse by Canada to Article 21.5 of the DSU, adopted 4 August 2000, AB-2000-3, WT/DS46/AB/RW, at para. 64.

70 Panel Report United States – Preliminary Determinations with respect to Certain Softwood Lumber from Canada, adopted 1 November 2002, WT/DS236/R, at para. 7.50.

71 Ibid., at para. 7.52.

72 Panel Report United States – Final Countervailing Duty Determination with respect to Certain Softwood Lumber from Canada, adopted 17 February 2004, WT/DS257/R, at para. 7.59.

73 Appellate Report United States – Final Countervailing Duty Determination with respect to Certain Softwood Lumber from Canada, adopted 17 February 2004, AB-2003-6, WT/DS257/AB/R, at paras. 100–1.

74 1994 WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitoary Measures, 1867 UNTS 493, Art. 2.2.

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80 Appellate Report European Communities – Measures Concerning Meat and Meat Products (Hormones), adopted 13 February 1998, AB-1997-4, WT/DS26/AB/R, WT/DS48/AB/R, at para. 117.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid., at para. 194.

83 Ibid., at para. 115.

84 Panel Report Japan – Measures Affecting the Importation of Apples, adopted 10 December 2003, WT/DS245/R, at paras. 8.169 – 81.

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87 Appellate Report Canada – Continued Suspension of Obligations in the EC – Hormones Dispute, adopted 14 November 2008, AB-2008-6, WT/DS321/AB/R, at para. 590.

88 Ibid., at para. 591.

89 Ibid.

90 See, generally, Appellate Report Australia – Measures Affecting the Importation of Apples from New Zealand, adopted 17 December 2010, AB-2010-2, WT/DS/AB/R. For a similar view, see Schropp, supra note 79; Peel, J., ‘Of Apples and Oranges (and Hormones in Beef): Science and the Standard Review in WTO Disputes under the SPS Agreement’, (2012) 61 (2)ICLQ 427CrossRefGoogle Scholar.