Sep. 5th, 2012

lloll4: ponyo peering out from under jellyfish (ponyo curious)
The first footnote to a textbook entitled Understanding Jurisprudence, authored by a guy named Raymond Wacks (ouch!):

Throughout this book, I use the words 'jurisprudence'. 'legal theory', and 'legal philosophy' interchangeably, though, strictly speaking, 'jurisprudence' concerns the theoretical analysis of law the highest level of abstraction.... 'Legal theory' is often used to denote theorectial enquiries about law 'as such' that extend beyond the boundaries of law as understood by professional lawyers.... 'Legal philosophy' or the 'philosophy of law', as its name implies, normally proceeds from the standpoint of the discipline of philosophy..."


If the three things are so different, why would you use them interchangeably? That's rather sloppy and unbefitting a serious intellectual inquiry. I can see how the concepts might overlap, but if you've already acknowledge that they mean different things - I'm just stuck at whut.

This is very weird. I'm trying to wrap my mind around how, not only can an author (haphazardly) lump the three terms together while acknowledging that they refer to different things, but also that it seems like an unremarkable thing to do - so unremarkable that it's cautioned in a footnote.

Another confounding footnote:

"...all that must be true is that reasons that bear on what one is legally obligated or permitted to do operate within the same domain as the reasons that bear on what one is morally obligated or permitted to do."

-"Law's Limited Domain Confronts Morality's Universal Domain", Larry Alexander and Frederick Schauer.

But why would they be in the same domain since you've just said they are different things? They seem like different things. If you're talking about how morality affects law (and vice versa) then they're definitely different things. I'm still at whut.

Could be it's just me, but some of the legal scholarship I've encountered recently looks kind of washy.

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