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Full-Text Articles in Law
Critical Legal Theory And The Politics Of Pragmatism, Peter D. Swan
Critical Legal Theory And The Politics Of Pragmatism, Peter D. Swan
Dalhousie Law Journal
In this century mainstream legal scholarship in the United States has been subjected to various "crises of confidence" over the nature of the adjudication process. One of the key features of more traditional legal scholarship has been a belief in legal texts such as the constitution, statutes and precedents which are said to possess discrete and objective meaning capable of being discovered by objective detached observers. This belief in the authority of the text has been most clearly expressed in American constitutional law scholarship which has been dominated until recently by the quest to reveal the public moral values that …
Nomos And Thanatos (Part A). The Killing Fields: Modern Law And Legal Theory, Richard F. Devlin
Nomos And Thanatos (Part A). The Killing Fields: Modern Law And Legal Theory, Richard F. Devlin
Dalhousie Law Journal
Law, is so far as it sanctions the coercive power of the state, enables people to do frightening - even deadly - things to each other. Contemporary jurisprudence, the explanatory and justificatory voice of legal practice, fails to interrogate law's interconnection with violence and death and therefore, by a sin of omission, legitimizes humankind's mutual inhumanity. The end result is jurisprudential tolerance of, and acquiescence in, societies underpinned by violence. By identifying the nexus between community (nomos) and death (thanatos), this, admittedly speculative, essay attempts to raise the possibility of a discourse, practice and society that can encourage, reflect and …