The Life of the Law after Critique: Comparative Legal Formalisms and Reconstructions Across Legal Cultures

The Life of the Law after Critique: Comparative Legal Formalisms and Reconstructions Across Legal Cultures

Abstract:
How is legal culture affected by more than a century of critique of the various claims of law for formality? In Western legal cultures, law is posited as: a separate science; apolitical; given to mechanical application; dispassionate; procedurally built for rational adjudication based on facts and norms; and detached from practice. These six tenets of formalism have been under attack in past decades, beginning in U.S. legal culture and expanding to other countries, resulting in various reconstructions, including novel notions of social activism, judicial discretion, consideration of relational, behavioral and economic perspectives and new modes of governance. Through an ethnographic, socio-legal approach, my research comparatively examines the alleged “death of law” and its possible resurrections. Theoretically, it develops a jurisprudence after critique, analyzing core intellectual legal foundations and reconstructions in eight legal cultures – the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Israel and England and Wales. Comparatively, the tenets of legal formalism, the play among them, and their reconstructions will be studied in each legal culture at five legal sites: legal academia, legal rhetoric, private and public law offices, legal clinics and layperson perspectives. Empirically, the tenets of formalism will be operationalized and relationships among them examined across legal cultures. Reconstructions of formalism will be studied in post-formalist legal cultures and on the transnational level. Methodologically, the research develops new methods, including machine learning platforms, to measure formalism in legal rhetoric, to mine legal data and to evaluate public trust in reference to formalism of law. Prescriptively, the research establishes platforms to encourage reflexivity and learning on contemporary legal identities in transition. It opens the door to understanding non-Western legal cultures and other professions in crisis.

Date: October 17, 2024.
Time: 3 pm – 5.00 pm
Place: Porcelænshaven 18b, 1.st. floor, 154, 2000 Frederiksberg
Registration deadline: October 14. 2024 to hl.bhl@cbs.dk
 

The conference is hosted by CBS LAW (BHL) and organized by Professor Henrik Lando, CBS Law/BHL and Professor Poul Frtiz Kjær, BHL.