Interdisciplinarity and the Authority Paradigm

Should Law Be Taken Seriously by Scientists and Social Scientists

Bibliographic Data

ID11449602
AuthorsGeoffrey Samuel (0000-0002-5563-871X, University of Kent, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume36
Issue4
Pages431-459
Publication date2009-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Law and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-323X • E-ISSN: 1467-6478
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00478.x
OpenAlexW2167573201
LanguageEN
Citations received8

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

Epistemology · Legal science · Political science · Position (finance · Principal (computer security · Social science · Sociology · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal Education and Practice Innovations · Philosophy

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