Saturday, August 1, 2009
Legal Realism As I Understand It
Obviously we've been talking a lot about legal realism in class since we've been studying the readings about it. As a result we've been talking a lot about the arguments against it. Personally I don't really understand many of the arguments against the idea of Legal Realism. Or more specifically I don't really understand how people can deny the findings of Legal Realism. What I mean by this is that we have all seen that people from different regions and upbringings possess completely different social, moral, and political beliefs; so I don't see why some legal philosophers choose to deny that is occurring amongst judges or that it's a problem. Now don't get me wrong I'm not attempting to argue against idea's such as Legal Positivism and Natural Law, because there are aspects of both of these ideas that I like. I'm just confused as to why some people argue against the idea of Legal Realism. Even if you don't believe that psychological or socio-economic backgrounds affect a judges decision in court, just the fact that it could be occurring is a issue to me. I just personally feel that one aspect of the law is to be as equal and fair as possible, and I find that judges who view the same case's and come up with different verdicts to be a threat to this aspect of the law. I don't want to sound like I'm ranting against all other legal ideals, I was more hoping that someone could bring me to light on the reasons why people would deny the ideals of Legal Realism, so if any of you could help me out on this I would greatly appreciate it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is a vague comment but based on your article I think its something to consider. I believe you could argue that law is innately unfair for two reasons. First, law is always biased towards a certain party. Someone has to win the case. Second, because the idea of justice is an ever changing idea. The state of justice determines the fairness of a case. In fact, justice is the fairness in a case. If that makes sense... Basically, law is innately flawed because human nature is flawed. Vague comment, but interesting when you think about this in terms of legal realism
ReplyDeleteIn response to Tyler:
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that human nature is flawed. It would be more accurate to say that humans are naturally flawed.
I also think that you can be less vague in response to the post. Law is flawed because the social contract is flawed. The social contract is flawed because it's composed of compromises and humans are flawed.