Theoria

With the exception of my “Crime and State in History” course, all of my courses have met three times now (the third meeting for “Crime and State” is Monday night). Things are progressing rather smoothly, all things considered (i.e., a bitter strike by the admin/academic support staff in which the university treated them like absolute shit; not to mention that I’m teaching three courses this semester, all for the first time – I’m aware of one person who refused to cross the picket and was more or less threatened with dismissal and another person who was accused of abbreviating her first week’s lectures and thus dragged into the Dean’s office [she's first year tenure-track, for what it is worth]. I’m not especially fond of the environment senior administration is creating on campus.). So far the most astute observation has come from a student in my “Legal Research Methods” course. We were reading from H.L.A. Hart’s The Concept of Law (as an example of doctrinal legal theory as opposed to “legal studies”) and were discussing the idea of law as a closed system of positive rules. I have no idea where the question came from because (1) we hadn’t discussed anything remotely similar thus far in the course and (2) she would not have come across the idea in any of her other courses (in this department or any other), but she wanted to know – although not in these words – where the constituent power was located in Hart’s system. A fairly good question and by far the best so far this semester.

Having said that, most of the students in my methods class were happy to announce that they had not done the readings. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to read H.L.A. Hart’s The Concept of Law or Ronald Dworkin’s “‘Natural’ Law Revisited,” but that is hardly a good reason – most of what you’re assigned to read as an undergraduate and especially as a graduate student is of little interest. Some of the other students thought Hart’s argument that law emerges out of custom as a solution to the inefficiency of applying sanctions to be a rather odd theory. I think they’re right.

I think my own studies have suffered – and my ability to fully appreciate Carl Schmitt – because I haven’t studied jurisprudence or legal theory in any great detail, especially liberal jurisprudence. While from the perspective of legal positivism it is understandable (law is not a political, social or moral question), from my own perspective it is not. Maybe I should have gone to law school?

My second year students in my “Development of Social Theory” course find the amount of reading onerous. This has forced me to revise the reading list and schedule – I’ve had to cut out a week of Hegel and all of Comte. Ultimately, it is less work for me, but I think they are doing themselves a disservice. I have no idea what my “Crime and State in History” students feel about the reading – I think they hated Gustave Le Bon, who we discussed last week.

The schedule for the Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities conference has been announced. I’ll post it anon.