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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2021
A century ago the pragmatists called for reconstruction in philosophy. Philosophy at the time was occupied with conceptual analysis, abstractions, a priori analysis, and the pursuit of necessary, universal truths. Pragmatists argued that philosophy instead should center on the pressing problems of the day, which requires theorists to pay attention to social complexity, variation, change, power, consequences, and other concrete aspects of social life. The parallels between philosophy then and jurisprudence today are striking, as I show, calling for a pragmatism-informed theory of law within contemporary jurisprudence. In the wake of H.L.A. Hart’s mid-century turn to conceptual analysis, “during the course of the twentieth century, the boundaries of jurisprudential inquiry were progressively narrowed.”1 Jurisprudence today is dominated by legal philosophers engaged in conceptual analysis built on intuitions, seeking to identify essential features and timeless truths about law. In the pursuit of these objectives, they detach law from its social and historical moorings, they ignore variation and change, they drastically reduce law to a singular phenomenon—like a coercive planning system for difficult moral problems2—and they deny that coercive force is a universal feature of law, among other ways in which they depart from the reality of law; a few prominent jurisprudents even proffer arguments that invoke aliens or societies of angels.
For critical feedback on earlier drafts, I thank Jose Maria Sauca Cano, Tim Murphy, Toni Mullenix, Andrew Botterell, an anonymous reviewer for the Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, and participants at the faculty workshop at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
1. Sean Coyle, “Legality and the Liberal Order” (2013) 76:2 Mod L Rev 401 at 401.
2. See Scott Shapiro, Legality (Harvard University Press, 2011).
3. See Brian Z Tamanaha, A Realistic Theory of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017). This essay articulates the pragmatic underpinnings of the realistic theory and crystallizes the naturalistic, historicist, holist, and social constructionist elements of the theory in terms of the social ontology of law, none of which was detailed in the book. I also articulate a pragmatist approach to questions about instrumentalism, power, and the common good and justice, which were not taken up in the book.
4. William James, Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth (Harvard University Press, 1975) at 83 [emphasis in original].
5. John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (Capricorn Books, 1960 [1929]) at 296-97.
6. Ibid at 196, 211, 233-34.
7. This is the “Pragmatic Maxim of meaning” articulated by Peirce. A broad-ranging, informative account of the implications of pragmatism for law is Susan Haack, “The Pragmatist Tradition: Lessons for Legal Theory” (2018) 95 Wash U L Rev 1049.
8. James, supra note 4 at 29.
9. John Dewey, “The Historic Background of Corporate Legal Personality” (1926) 35 Yale LJ 655 at 660.
10. James, supra note 4 at 97 [emphasis in original].
11. Ibid at 101.
12. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 2nd ed (Beacon Press, 1948) at 156.
13. James, supra note 4 at 31.
14. Richard J Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn (Polity Books, 2010) at ch 5.
15. Ibid at 114.
16. Ibid.
17. See Dewey, supra note 5 at 108-39, 186-87.
18. James, supra note 4 at 32.
19. Dewey, supra note 12 at 145.
20. James, supra note 4 at 33.
21. Ibid at 31.
22. Dewey, supra note 12 at xii.
23. Ibid at 26.
24. Ibid at xii.
25. Ibid at 18-19.
26. Ibid at 20-21.
27. Ibid at 54.
28. Ibid at 61.
29. John Dewey, Philosophy and Civilization (Capricorn Books, 1963 [1931]) at 25.
30. An informative overview of the differences can be found in Susan Haack, “Introduction: Pragmatism, Old and New” in Susan Hack, ed, Pragmatism Old and New: Selected Writings (Prometheus Books, 2006). The pragmatists disagreed on basic points and are often divided into the Peirce wing and the James, Dewey, and Mead wing. I draw mainly on the latter, setting aside their differences. A broader discussion of pragmatism is in Brian Z Tamanaha, Realistic Socio-Legal Theory: Pragmatism and a Social Theory of Law (Clarendon Press, 1997). One major contrast is between philosophers who emphasize the realistic or objectivistic elements of pragmatic views of truth, like Hillary Putnam, versus philosophers like Richard Rorty who reject these elements. See, respectively, Hilary Putnam & Ruth Anna Putnam, Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey (Harvard University Press, 2017) and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979).
31. Susan Haack recently published an essay on various implications of pragmatism for legal theory. Though I cover different ground in this essay, I agree with much of her analysis. See Haack, supra note 7.
32. Joseph Raz, Between Authority and Interpretation, 2nd ed (Oxford University Press, 2009) at 24, 17.
33. Jules Coleman, “Incorporationism, Conventionality, and the Practical Difference Thesis” (1998) 4:4 Legal Theory 381 at 393 n 24.
34. Julie Dickson, Evaluation and Legal Theory (Hart, 2001) at 18.
35. Shapiro, supra note 2 at 9.
36. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Clarendon Press, 1980) at 18.
37. Ibid.
38. Leslie Green, “The Morality in Law” in L Duarte d’Almeida, J Edwards & A Dolcetti, eds, Reading HLA Hart’s The Concept of Law (Hart, 2013) at 33.
39. Shapiro, supra note 2 at 406-07 n 16.
40. Raz, supra note 32 at 91.
41. Finnis, supra note 36 at 24.
42. Ibid.
43. Brian Z Tamanaha, “Necessary and Universal Truths About Law” (2017) 30:1 Ratio Juris 3.
44. Raz, supra note 32 at 95.
45. Ibid at 98.
46. Dewey, supra note 5 at 244.
47. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (University of Nebraska Press, 1996) at 218.
48. Philip P Wiener, Evolution and the Founders of Pragmatism (Harper & Row, 1965) at 191.
49. Shapiro, supra note 2 at 17.
50. Ibid at 13-38.
51. Raz, supra note 32 at 23.
52. Finnis, supra note 36 at 64-65.
53. Ibid at 69.
54. Shapiro, supra note 2 at 13.
55. Ibid at 16.
56. Ibid at 19.
57. Ibid at 15.
58. See Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 89-93, 105-07.
59. Tamar Herzog, A Short History of European Law (Harvard University Press, 2018) at 4.
60. Dewey, supra note 5 at 183.
61. Ibid.
62. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law (Regenery Gateway, 1987 [1273]) at 59.
63. John Dewey, “My Philosophy of Law” in Julius Rosenthal Foundation, ed, My Philosophy of Law—Credos of Sixteen American Scholars (Boston Law Book, 1941) at 75.
64. Dewey, supra note 12 at 26. An example of Dewey’s observation in Finnis’s own work are his arguments that homosexual conduct violates the basic good of marriage, which he articulated subsequent to the publication of his book on natural law, when treatment of homosexuals increasingly became a pressing issue within religious, political, and legal circles. See John M Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation’” (1994) 69:5 Notre Dame L Rev 1049.
65. John Dewey, “Nature and Reason in Law” (1914) 25:1 Int’l J Ethics 25 at 30-31.
66. See Shapiro, supra note 2 at chs 5 and 6.
67. Leslie Green, “The Forces of Law: Duty, Coercion, and Power” (2016) 29:2 Ratio Juris 164 at 165-66.
68. Ibid at 166.
69. Ibid at 167.
70. Ibid.
71. James, supra note 4 at 32 [emphasis in original].
72. Dewey, supra note 12 at 148-60 and Dewey, supra note 5 at 216-18. Haack emphasizes that the “philosophers of the classical pragmatist tradition were in no way anti-theoretical.” Haack, supra note 7 at 1050.
73. See Jack Ritchie, Understanding Naturalism (Acumen, 2008).
74. Mead situates human societies among animal societies. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (University of Chicago Press, 1962) at 227-44.
75. John Dewey, “The Development of American Pragmatism” in HS Thayer, ed, Pragmatism: The Classical Writings (Hackett, 1982) at 37.
76. Ibid at 38.
77. A naturalistic account of the emergence of legal phenomena is provided in Brian Z Tamanaha, “Law’s Evolving Emergent Phenomena: From Rules of Social Intercourse to Rule of Law Society” (2018) 95:5 Wash U L Rev 1149.
78. See Donald E Brown, Human Universals (McGraw Hill, 1991).
79. Ibid at 136-40. See also Kent Flannery & Joyce Marcus, The Creation of Inequality: How our Prehistoric Ancestor set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (Harvard University Press, 2012) at ch 4; Edward Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth (Liveright, 2012) at 192-93; Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 82-84. See also Robert M Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press, 2017).
80. This is a different version of what Hart called the minimum content of natural law. See HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Press, 1961) at 188.
81. See Jonathan Haidt, “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology” (2007) 316:5827 Science 998.
82. See John Mikhail, “Universal Moral Grammar: Theory, Evidence and the Future” (2007) 11:4 Trends in Cognitive Science 143.
83. Ibid at 143.
84. George Herbert Mead, “The Psychology of Punitive Justice” (1918) 23:5 Am J Sociology 577 at 586-97.
85. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law (Transaction Publishers, 2005 [1881]) at 3.
86. See Lisa Herzog, “Adam Smith’s Account of Justice Between Naturalness and Historicity” (2014) 52:4 J of the History of Philosophy 703 at 705-07.
87. Adam Smith, The Essential Adam Smith, Robert L Heilbronner, ed (WW Norton & Co, 1986) at 116, 94.
88. Ibid at 97.
89. Ibid.
90. Sapolsky, supra note 79 at 610.
91. Wilson, supra note 79 at 250-51.
92. Ibid at 250.
93. Hart, supra note 80 at 77-96.
94. See Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 84-89.
95. Flannery & Marcus, supra note 79 at 478-81, 500-02.
96. An excellent overview is Robert L Carneiro, “The Chiefdom: Precursor of the State” in Grant D Jones & Robert R Kautz, eds, The Transition to Statehood in the New World (Cambridge University Press, 1981) 37-75; see Gil J Stein, “Heterogeneity, Power, and Political Economy: Some Current Research Issues in the Archaeology of Old World Complex Societies” (1998) 6:1 J of Archaeological Research 1.
97. Hart, supra note 80 at 91-92.
98. Sapolsky, supra note 79 at 475.
99. Ibid at 430-31.
100. See ibid at 580-613; Jon Schuppe, “Blame My Brain: A Killer’s Bold Defense Gets a Court Hearing” (27 April 2019), online at NBC News www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/blame-my-brain-killer-s-bold-defense-gets-court-hearing-n998676 [perma.cc/7XYT-DYP4].
101. Sapolsky, supra note 79 at 155-73.
102. Ibid at 387-424.
103. See ibid.
104. Dewey, supra note 5 at 249.
105. Ibid at 211-12.
106. Martin Krygier, “Law as Tradition” (1986) 5:2 Law & Phil 237.
107. Wiener, supra note 48 at 28.
108. Charles Sanders Peirce, “Definition and Description of Pragmatism” in HS Thayer, ed, Pragmatism: The Classical Writings (Hackett, 1982) at 54-55.
109. Nicholas St John Green, Essays and Notes (George Banta, 1933) at 53, quoted in Wiener, supra note 48 at 163.
110. Ibid at 156.
111. See Susan Haack, “On Legal Pragmatism: Where Does ‘The Path of the Law’ Lead Us?” (2005) 50:1 Am J of Juris 71.
112. Holmes, supra note 85 at 5.
113. George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Act (Chicago University Press, 1938) at 496.
114. Dewey, supra note 75.
115. Dewey, supra note 63 at 82.
116. Ibid at 85.
117. Holmes, supra note 85 at 5.
118. George Herbert Mead, “Natural Rights and the Theory of the Political Institution” (1915) 12:6 J of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 141 at 142.
119. Ibid at 150.
120. Ibid at 151.
121. Ibid at 152.
122. Tamanaha, supra note 3 at ch 1.
123. Brian Bix, Jurisprudence: Theory and Context, 7th ed (Carolina Academic Press, 2015) at 196, 278.
124. Tamanaha, supra note 3 at ch 4.
125. John Dewey, “Logical Method and Law” (1914) 10:1 Cornell Law Q 17 at 27.
126. Ibid.
127. See Brian Z Tamanaha, “Sociological Jurisprudence Past and Present” (2020) 45:2 Law & Soc Inquiry 493.
128. Dewey, supra note 63 at 77.
129. Roscoe Pound, “The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence” (1907) 30 ABA Annual Reports 911 at 919-20.
130. Raz, supra note 32 at 104.
131. Shapiro, supra note 2 at 225.
132. Dewey, supra note 63 at 77.
133. Coyle, supra note 1 at 409.
134. There is substantial disagreement over the meaning of ‘institution’. I apply the conception of social institutions as enduring structures of patterned social action created on an ongoing basis through collectively recognized roles, rules, practices, and meaningful actions. See generally Seumas Miller, “Social Institutions” in Edward N Zalta, ed, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (4 January 2007), online at www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-institutions [perma.cc/8YRA-LYLV].
135. See John R Searle, The Construction of Social Reality [Searle, Social Reality] (Free Press, 1995) and John R Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization [Searle, Human Civilization] (Oxford University Press, 2010).
136. Mead, supra note 74 at 261.
137. Organizations are discrete entities that carry out activities in the pursuit of given projects; all organizations are institutions, though not all institutions are organizations.
138. Mead, supra note 74 at 262.
139. Mead, supra note 113 at 498.
140. See Neil MacCormick, Institutions of Law: An Essay in Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2007) at 289-93 and Searle, Social Reality, supra note 135 at 27-51.
141. Hart, supra note 80 at 78-79.
142. Ibid at 39.
143. Ibid at 92 [emphasis added].
144. Searle, Social Reality, supra note 135 at 34.
145. An example that accomplished all three via declaration is the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub L No 107-296, 116 Stat 2135 (codified as amended at 6 USC §101 (2002)).
146. See Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 120-24, 131.
147. Focusing on collective acceptance is a common theoretical approach to social institutions, though there are other approaches. See Miller, supra note 134. An influential philosophical account is Searle’s social ontology. See Searle, Social Reality, supra note 135 and Searle, Human Civilization, supra note 135. There is a great deal of disagreement among philosophers, social theorists, and sociologists over the features of social institutions. A mid-level social constructionist approach that is compatible with more than one philosophical account can be utilized by social and legal theorists while setting aside fundamental issues.
148. See Benjamin van Rooij, “Do People Know the Law? Empirical Evidence about Legal Knowledge and its Implications for Compliance” in Benjamin van Rooij & Daniel D Sokol, eds, Cambridge Handbook of Compliance (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2021).
149. Leila Chirayath, Caroline Sage & Michael Woolcock, “Customary Law and Policy Reform: Engaging with the Plurality of Legal Systems” (2005) World Bank Working Paper No 33655 at 3.
150. Brian Z Tamanaha, “Understanding Legal Pluralism: Past to Present, Local to Global” (2008) 30:3 Sydney L Rev 375.
151. Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality, 2nd ed (Oxford University Press, 2009) at 43.
152. Herzog, supra note 59 at ch 6; Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 105-07.
153. Mead, supra note 118 at 153.
154. Dewey, supra note 12 at 194.
155. Dewey, supra note 63 at 76.
156. Ibid at 77.
157. Ibid at 84.
158. See John Dewey, “Force and Coercion” (1916) 26:3 Int’l J Ethics 359.
159. Dewey, supra note 63 at 84.
160. Rudolph von Jhering, The Struggle for Law, translated by John J Lalor (Callaghan and Co, 1915 [1879]) at 10-11.
161. See Kenneth M Ehrenberg, The Functions of Law (Oxford University Press, 2016) at ch 8.
162. Henri JM Claessen, “Was the State Inevitable?” (2002) 1:1 Soc Evolution & Hist 101 at 104.
163. Joseph A Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988) at 33.
164. Tamanaha, supra note 3 at 93-98.
165. Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Gas Stoker’s Strike” (1873) 7 Am L Rev 582 at 583.
166. Ibid.
167. See Brian Z Tamanaha, Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006) at ch 11.
168. Robert O’Harrow & Shawn Boburg, “A Conservative Activist’s Behind the Scenes Campaign to Remake the Nation’s Courts” (21 May 2019), online at Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?utm_term=.c0de0e609cfc [perma.cc/4RPM-JVDY].
169. Tamanaha, supra note 167 at ch 10.
170. Dewey left power mostly implicit. See RW Hildreth, “Reconstructing Dewey on Power” (2009) 37:6 Political Theory 780.
171. James, supra note 4 at 31.
172. Dewey, supra note 5 at 282-83.
173. Ibid at 80.
174. Dewey, supra note 158 at 367.
175. Ibid at 363-67.
176. Ibid at 363-64.
177. Dewey, supra note 5 at 278.
178. On the transformative potential of ideals, see Dewey, supra note 12 at 120-21.
179. Ibid at 121.
180. Ibid at 194.
181. These values are entailed by scientific inquiry, which does not mean they are always reflected in actual scientific practices.
182. Hilary Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity” in Martha Nussbaum & Jonathan Glover, eds, Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities (Oxford University Press, 1995) at 220-21. See also Cheryl Misak, “Dewey on the Authority and Legitimacy of Law” in Steven Fesmire, ed, The Oxford Handbook of Dewey (Oxford University Press, 2019).
183. Putnam, supra note 182 at 218.
184. See Misak, supra note 182 at 205.
185. On the absence of universal moral principles in Dewey’s thought, see Michael Eldridge, “Dewey, John” in International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley Online Library (Blackwell, 2013).
186. Axel Honneth, “Between Proceduralism and Teleology: An Unresolved Conflict in Dewey’s Moral Theory” (1998) 34:3 Transactions of the Charles S Peirce Society 689 at 700-01.
187. Roscoe Pound, “My Philosophy of Law” in Julius Rosenthal Foundation, ed, My Philosophy of Law—Credos of Sixteen American Scholars (Boston Law Book, 1941) at 251 and Roscoe Pound, “A Survey of Social Interests” (1943) 57:1 Harv L Rev 1.
188. Dewey, supra note 5 at 260.
189. See Bernstein, supra note 14 at 8.
190. Dewey, supra note 12 at 490.
191. Ibid at 84.
192. For a summary, see Aviva Aron-Dine, “The Impact of the Administration’s Policies Affecting the Affordable Care Act” (6 February 2019), online at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities www.cbpp.org/health/impact-of-the-administrations-policies-affecting-the-affordable-care-act [perma.cc/J4MD-9BYJ].
193. Thus far the bills proposed by the Republicans in Congress have not lived up to these promises. Robert Pear, “Republicans Offer Health Care Bills to Protect Patients (and Themselves)” (20 April 2019), online at New York Times www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/us/politics/pre-existing-conditions-trump-administration.html [perma.cc/3K4Y-WWFW].
194. Bernstein, supra note 14 at 84.
195. Dewey, supra note 12 at 186.
196. This end is basically the same as what Honneth identifies as Dewey’s position from the outset of his philosophical career, prior to his conversion to pragmatism, seeing “moral theory as a whole solely as an ethics of self-realization.” See Honneth, supra note 186 at 692. In addition to later speaking of “growth” as an end, the main shift in Dewey’s thinking was connecting self-realization to advancing the well-being of the community. Ibid at 694.
197. See ibid at 703 (“in Dewey’s work there is no reference to a principle that could justify why we are obligated to morally respect all human beings”).