Four Feet of Legal Procedure and the Origins of Jurisprudence in Ancient India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3959339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patrick Olivelle (The University of Texas at Austin), Mark Mcclish (0009-0008-0006-2929, Birmingham–Southern College) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 135 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289 |
| Publisher | American Oriental Society (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.1.33 |
| OpenAlex | W2531899905 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
The well-known classification of legal procedure into "four feet" presents certain conceptual problems for the Indian legal tradition that various Smṛtikāras and commentators have attempted to resolve in different and sometimes contradictory ways. These difficulties arise because the four feet originally referred in Indian legal theory to four distinct, hierarchical legal domains rather than procedural means for reaching a verdict. The earliest attested discussion of the four feet, found in Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra, indicates that early legal theorists understood the greater legal order as being comprised of four hierarchical domains and that these domains were ordered by the state as expressed in the original formulation of the four feet. Among the four legal domains, that of vyavahāra was developed by the state itself as a realm of public, transactional law meant to address disputes that could not be resolved in other legal forums. From this we can conclude that the origin of Indian jurisprudence lies with state efforts to formalize and enforce the laws of public transactions. The reinterpretation of the four feet by later jurists was motivated perhaps by resistance to one of the fundamental relationships expressed in the four feet, namely that royal authority possessed the greatest legal authority, independent of Brāhmaṇical law
Jurisprudence · Legal history · Legal pluralism · Legal realism · Legal research · Order (exchange) · Political science · Reinterpretation · State (computer science) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems · Legal principles and applications · Mathematics · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2023 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |