Philosophy of Law
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Lawrence B. Solum (University of Illinois – College of Law) has posted On the Intderminacy Crisis: Critiquing Critical Dogma (University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 54, No. 462, 1987) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay investigates the indeterminacy thesis – roughly the claim that the content of authoritative legal materials (such as the…
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Frederick Schauer has posted A Critical Guide to Vehicles in the Park on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The 1958 debate in the pages of the Harvard Law Review between Lon Fuller and H.L.A. Hart is one of the landmarks of modern jurisprudence. And although much of the debate was about the relative merits of…
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Frederick Schauer (Harvard University – John F. Kennedy School of Government) has posted Authority and Authorities (Virginia Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Although there is a rich jurisprudential literature dealing with the concept of authority in law, the lessons from this jurisprudential tradition have never been connected with the practice by…
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Torben Spaak (Uppsala University – Faculty of Law) has posted Book Review: Brian Leiter, Naturalizing Jurisprudence on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Ever since W. V. Quine published an essay entitled "Epistemology Naturalized," naturalism has been an important topic in core areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of…
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Leslie Green has posted Positivism and the Inseparability of Law and Morals (New York University Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This is the penultimate draft of a paper originally presented at the Hart-Fuller at 50 conference, held at the NYU Law School in February 2008. A revised version will appear in…
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Brian Tamanaha comments on the latest Lexicon entry over at Balkinization. His thoughtful reaction prompted the following addition to my post: In some ways, the title of this Lexicon entry is misleading, because of our focus on the "What is law?" question as it has been approached by contemporary legal philosophers. There are other important…
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Andrei Marmor (University of Southern California – Law School) has posted The Pragmatics of Legal Language on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In most standard cases, the content of the law is tantamount to the content that is communicated by the relevant legal authority. It has been long noticed by linguists and philosophers of language,…
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Maksymilian T. Del Mar (University of Edinburgh) has posted Responsiveness on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper introduces the notion of responsiveness and the role it might play in moral, political and legal philosophy. The paper has four parts. The first considers the meaning of the call for making room for responsiveness, and discusses…
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Brian Leiter comments on Brian Tamanaha’s The Bogus Tale About the Legal Formalists. As you will see, Leiter concedes an enormous amount of ground–but he has a very important point to make: Tamanaha gives us no sense of what was distinctive about the arguments and claims of the Legal Realists, which makes it rather too…
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Brian Z. Tamanaha (St. John’s University – School of Law) has posted Understanding Legal Realism on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Legal realism is well known, but generally misunderstood. Through a close examination of the work of the legal realists and their predecessors, this article presents a complete reconstruction of legal realism. The most startling…