Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T04:13:01.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rise of legal formalism; or the defences of legal faith

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

‘Just as in religion, so long as there is a religion, there must be a dogmatic theology, which cannot be replaced by any religious psychology or sociology, so, as long as there is a law, there must be a normative theory of law.’ H. Kelsen

In terms of the history of the social sciences, the latter quarter of the nineteenth century was characterised in no uncertain manner by neo-Kantianism. The revival in question was aimed at rehabilitating the Kantian concept of science as a system, unified essentially by the idea of a system rather than by any more realistic or historical classification of its subject matter. The most notable and far-reaching effects of this revival were to be the constitution of the sciences of linguistics and of law. In both cases the major portion of the nineteenth century had been dominated by attacks upon the received orthodoxies of universal grammar and of exegetical legal studies, respectively, and their displacement by the uncertainties of creationist and historical methodologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , November 1983 , pp. 248 - 266
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. Kelsen, H. ‘The Pure Theory of Law, Its Methods and Fundamental Concepts’ (1934)50 Google Scholar LQR 474 at 490.

2. For the Pure Theory of Law, cf Ebenstein, W. The Pure Theory of Law (1969, New York)Google Scholar; Stewart, I. ‘Sociology in Jurisprudence’, in Fryer, B. et al (eds) Law, State and Society (1981, Croom Helm) p. 107 Google Scholar. For more general accounts, cf Foucault, M. The Order of Things (1970, Tavistock) pp. 358 Google Scholar ff: Timpanaro, S. On Materialism (1975, London) Ch. 4Google Scholar; Clarke, S. The Foundations of Structuralism (1981, Harvester)Google Scholar.

3. H. Kelsen (1934) 50 LQR at 490.

4. Shklar, J. Legalism (1964, Harvard University Press)Google Scholar; Cohen, J. ‘The Political Element in Legal Theory’ (1978), 88 Yale Law Journal 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perelman, Ch. Logique Juridique (1976, Dalloz) Part 1Google Scholar; see also Kelsen's, own account in General Theory of Law and State (1946, Harvard) pp. 409–446 Google Scholar.

5. Kelsen, H. Pure Theory of Law (1970, University of California Press) pp. 191–192 Google Scholar.

6. H. Kelsen, (1934) 50 LQR at 477, 486.

7. See the very useful historical essays collected in What is Justice (1957, University of California Press). Kelsen's theme in these essays is that of an unstinted attack upon any and all attempts to introduce any consideration of questions of morality or justice into legal science. I cannot refrain from citing his extraordinary conclusion to the essay ‘Natural Law before the Tribunal of Science’: ‘From the point of view of science (natural law) method is entirely worthless. In the ‘Laws’ Plato distinguishes lies which are, and those that are not permissible. Lies are permissible if they are useful to the state. That the natural law doctrine, as it pretends, is able to determine in an objective way what is just is a lie; but those who consider it useful may make use of it as a useful lie.’(p. 173).

8. General Theory of Law and State (1946) pp. 434–435 Google Scholar.

9. Pure Theory of Law (1970) p. 72 Google ScholarPubMed.

10. On the transcendental assumptions of science generally, cf Bhaskar, R.: A Realist of Science (1975, Leeds) pp 35–56 Google Scholar.

11. Kant, I. Critiique of Pure Reason (1887, London) p. 503 Google Scholar. Kant continues to define a system as ‘the unity of various cognitions under one idea. The idea is the conception – given by reason – of the form of a whole, insofar as the conception determines a priori not only the limits of its content, but the place which each of its parts is to occupy’.

12. General Theory of Law and State (1946) p. XIII.

13. What is Justice (1957) p. 262.

14. Pure Theory of Law (1970) p. 218 Google ScholarPubMed. A point repeated ad infiniturn by the later proponents of legal positivism. See, for a recent example, MacCormick, D. N. ‘Law, Morality and Positivism’ (1981) 2 Legal Studies 131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Critique of Pure Reason (1887) p. 7 Google ScholarPubMed: ‘In all judgements wherein the relation of the subject to the predicate is cogitated … this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something which is contained (covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely outside of the conception A, although it stands in connexion with it. In the first instance, I term the judgement analytic, in the second, synthetic.’

16. Pure Theory of Law (1970) p. 75.

17. Ibid p. 165.

18. Ibid p. 173.

19. Ibid p. 18.

20. Raz, J. The Concept of a System (1980, Clarendon) pp. 95 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. For commentary on this aspect of Kelsen's work, cf Della Volpe, G. Rousseau and Marx (1978, London) Ch 2 and Appendix 1Google Scholar.

22. Purr Theory of Low (1970) p. 170. Kelsen concludes: ‘It is easy to understand why the ideology of legal subjectivity seeks to establish a link with the ethical value of freedom. An order that refused to recognise man as a free personality in this respect, that is, an order that does not guarantee the subjective right of property, is rejected by this ideology as not being a legal order at all.’

43. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law (1976, Aalen) passim. Google Scholar

24. General Theory supra, p. 124.

25. Pure Theory (1970) pp. 276, 245.

26. Ibid p. 319.

27. Ibid p. 352.

28. Ibid pp. 353–354.

29. Pashukanis, E. Law and Marxism (1978, London) p. 52 Google Scholar.

30. Cohn, G. Existentialism and Legal Science (1967, New York) passimGoogle Scholar.

31. Finnis, J. Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980, Clarendon) p. 21 Google Scholar.

32. Particular emphasis will be placed upon: Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence (1953, Oxford)Google Scholar; The Concept of Law (1962, Clarendon)Google ScholarPubMed.

33. See Hart, H. L. A. ‘Analytic Jurisprudence in the Mid-20th Century (1952) 105 Univ of Penn Law Review Google Scholar.

34. It is not insignificant that de Saussure, F. Course in General Linguistics (1966, McGraw-Hill)Google Scholar, the progenitor of modern anthropological and literary structuralisms, lays especial emphasis upon the notion of social fact, but similarly fails to provide the notion with any substantive social content.

35. Particularly Austin, J. L. How to do Things with Words (1962, Clarendon)Google Scholar and Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations (1963, Blackwell)Google Scholar.

36. Concept of Law (1962) pp. 89–90.

37. Ibid p. 92.

38. Ibid p. 107.

39. Cf Philosophical Investigations (1963) paras. 50 and 75.

40. Concept of Law (1962) p. 103. See Raz, J., op cit, pp. 197–202 Google Scholar for a different account.

41. Ibid p. 60.

42. Ibid p. 111. Compare Austin, J. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1954, London) pp. 63 Google Scholar ff.

43. Pure Theory (1970) p. 218.

44. Definition and Theory (1953). For appreciative accounts of this linguistic background, see MacCormick, D. N. H. L. A. Hurt (1981, Arnold) Ch 1Google Scholar; Hacker, P. M. and Raz, J. Law, Morality and Society (1977, Oxford) Ch 1Google Scholar. For a more critical and thorough account see Moore, M. S. ‘The Semantics of Judging’ (1981) 54 Southern California Law Review 151 Google Scholar.

45. Definition and Theory (1953) pp. 7–8.

46. Wittgenstein, L. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1971, London) pp. 5–10 Google Scholar.

47. Austin, J. L., supra, pp. 47–53 Google Scholar.

48. Definition and Theory (1953), p. 8.

49. Hart, H. L. A. ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’ (1958) 71 Harvard Law Review at 606 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. CF also Jackson, B. S. ‘Sources du droit’ (1982) Archives De Philosophie du Droit 147 Google Scholar.

50. Waisman, F. ‘Verifiability’ (1945) Proc of the Aristotelian Soc Vol 19 (suppl)Google Scholar.

51. Concept of Law (1962) p. 123.

52. Ibid p. 128.

53. Dworkin, R. Taking Rights Seriously (1978, Duckworth) Chs 2–4 Google ScholarPubMed.

54. MacCormick, D. N. Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (1978, Clarendon) Ch VIIIGoogle Scholar.

55. Viscountess Rhondda's Claim (1922) 2 Google ScholarPubMed AC 389.

56. Ibid at 463–464.