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Law As Rhetoric, Rhetoric As Law: The Arts Of Cultural And Communal Life, James Boyd White Jan 1985

Law As Rhetoric, Rhetoric As Law: The Arts Of Cultural And Communal Life, James Boyd White

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In this paper I shall suggest that law is most usefully seen not, as it usually is by academics and philosophers, as a system of rules, but as a branch of rhetoric; and that the kind of rhetoric of which law is a species is most usefully seen not, as rhetoric usually is, either as a failed science or as the ignoble art of persuasion, but as the central art by which community and culture are established, maintained, and transformed. So regarded, rhetoric is continuous with law, and like it, has justice as its ultimate subject. I do not mean …


On Preferences And Promises: A Response To Harsanyi, Donald H. Regan Jan 1985

On Preferences And Promises: A Response To Harsanyi, Donald H. Regan

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John C. Harsanyi sketches an entire normative and metaethical theory in under twenty pages. Combining breadth and brevity, his essay is useful and interesting. It reveals the interrelations between Harsanyi's positions on various issues as no longer work or series of articles could do. But by virtue of its programmatic nature, the essay creates a dilemma for a commentator, at least for one who finds many things to disagree with. If I responded to Harsanyi in the same sweeping terms in which he argues, we would end up with little more than opposing assertions. At the other extreme, I could …