Can Doctrinal Legal Scholarship Be Defended?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14296/ac.v4i1.5487Abstract
This review article investigates the question whether doctrinal legal scholarship can be defended. And it does so in the light of a new book by Mátyás Bódig that sets out an epistemological defence of this scholarship. The second half of this article critically examines this work, while the first half looks more generally at how doctrinal legal scholarship is defined in the civil and common law traditions and how it has traditionally been defended in the United Kingdom. One secondary question that is considered is whether doctrinal legal scholarship is of any greater value, epistemologically, than scholarship in astrology. The article is sceptical as to whether doctrinal legal scholarship can be defended, except as scholarship providing assistance to the legal profession and judiciary.
Keywords: astrology; Bódig (Mátyás); Dworkin (Ronald); doctrine; epistemology; hermeneutics; methodology; theory.
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