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Some Skepticism About Skepticism: A Comment On Katz, Mitchell N. Berman
Some Skepticism About Skepticism: A Comment On Katz, Mitchell N. Berman
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Several different, if related, questions are swirling about in this fascinating and wide‐ranging symposium. One question asks whether “law” is “autonomous.” A second inquires into the “determinacy” of “legal doctrine.” Yet a third concerns whether there are ever legally correct answers to legal questions. I take this third question to be equivalent to asking whether legal propositions are truth‐apt and, if so, whether any are true.
If I read him correctly, this third question is the focus of Professor Leo Katz's characteristically inventive and thought‐provoking contribution, Nine Takes on Indeterminacy, with Special Emphasis on the Criminal Law. What Professor Katz …
Nine Takes On Indeterminacy, With Special Emphasis On The Criminal Law, Leo Katz
Nine Takes On Indeterminacy, With Special Emphasis On The Criminal Law, Leo Katz
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The claim that legal disputes have no determinate answer is an old one. The worry is one that assails every first‐year law student at some point. Having learned to argue both sides of every case, the feeling seems inevitable.
But to assess the “skeptical thesis,” which is what I will hereafter call this claim, in its strongest version, we will do well to look at a particularly vigorous presentation of it, which, in the case of criminal law, is to be found in Mark Kelman's justly famous Interpretive Constructs in the Criminal Law. What caught people's imagination about Kelman's …