Law Commons^™

Why Law?, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Fairness, then, not order, is the special domain of law. The accompaniments of law we expect in our society flow less from law itself, and more from our changing understanding of what is fair. As our understanding of fairness changes, we expect the law to change as well. Because fairness criteria have been shown empirically to vary from society to society, we can expect legal diversity to remain an enduring feature of the jurisprudential landscape. But now we know why.