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Taking methods Seriously (Part One)

Samuel, Geoffrey (2007) Taking methods Seriously (Part One). Journal of Comparative Law, 2 (1). pp. 94-119. ISSN 1477-0814. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:2133)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
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Abstract

This article questions whether those outside law should take law seriously as an intellectual discipline capable of contributing to the development of epistemological thinking in the natural and social sciences. The discipline is approached from a diachronic and synchronic position with emphasis on the civil law tradition. It will be shown that the governing paradigm in legal studies has always been the ‘authority paradigm’, which results in law being closer to theology than to the social sciences. Its principal actors (judges) make assertions free from the normal constraints of scientific method; accordingly, the idea of a ‘legal science’ (imported into the common law tradition after 1846) must be treated with great caution. It is not a science dedicated to enquiring about the nature of the physical world, society or social relations. Its epistemological development remains trapped in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: thus, as a discipline, law has little to offer other social sciences.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: K Law
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: F. Hogben
Date Deposited: 19 Dec 2007 19:29 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:40 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/2133 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Samuel, Geoffrey.

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