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28 - Good Order and Workable Arrangements: Lon Fuller’s Critique of Legal Positivism

from Part VI - Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

By
Kenneth Winston
Edited by
Torben Spaak  and
Patricia Mindus
Torben Spaak
Affiliation:
Stockholms Universitet
Patricia Mindus
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

Winston argues that Lon Fuller’s critique of legal positivism was rather special in focusing on issues that lay beneath the surface of the usual intramural disputes, and thus related only indirectly to what positivists, such as Kelsen and Hart, said explicitly when expounding their views. Winston explains that, as a pragmatist, Fuller largely eschewed conceptual or semantic questions, focusing instead on questions of methodology and governance, in particular the adequacy of a scientific approach to understanding human society and the role played by agency and purpose in ordering civic life. In a phrase, Fuller faulted legal positivists for encouraging the kind of social engineering perspective reflected in bureaucratic/regulatory states. The importance of a pragmatic jurisprudence – and its superiority over other social sciences – lies precisely in the practical experience and concerns which lawyers possess (and other social scientists lack) and which they bring to bear in fashioning the participatory social architecture that is better at protecting human freedom.

Keywords

positivismlegal ordersocial orderfactvalue
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism , pp. 651 - 674
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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