The Spirited but Naive Undergraduate
This blog is dustier than the Mad Arab's volume, but consider this a first restorative puff across the cover, and do forgive me should the dust raise a cough or two.
I have found myself, a novice in the field of Jurisprudence, registered for Phil5415: Philosophy of Law this semester. With my neophyte status in mind, I intend to blog regularly about topics under discussion in the class for two purposes. The first is to foster a better understanding of concepts unfamiliar to me. This course is offered at the graduate level, both under the College of Liberal Arts and as a Law School class - which leaves the me, the spirited but naïve undergraduate, in an obviously difficult position. I will be left with a plethora of concepts utterly new to me, which is at once exciting and daunting, and so, I believe that the use of this medium will prove invaluable, should I actually manage to use it.
The second purpose is again related to my odd position in the course: observation of my own learning process. Often, coming into a philosophy course, I have a good level of background information, along with knowledgeable peers, and pretty convincing grasp of context. Here, despite the fact that I have a forthcoming paper on the role of mercy with respect to criminal justice for the UCLA Undergraduate Law Journal, I have nowhere near that wealth of resources. That being said, I'm also not a complete moron, so I think it'll be interesting to review this blog once the class is over, and watch the process. I'm sure quantum physics says "No" here, but empiricism isn't everything (it's really only.. one thing... actually...), so enjoy the show if you like.
All of that out of the way... on to the real deal. Today's course dealt with the topic of Jurisprudence in a general sense - circumventing the obligation to answer "What is Law?", we instead asked, "...and what the does that mean?" Which is a perfectly acceptable endeavor, I'd say. Though we discussed several different interpretations of this, from a pseudo-Platonic analysis onward, what caught my attention was the proposition of Joseph Raz - Conceptual Analysis.
I have read little of Raz' work, but what I've seen illustrates a brilliant mind, certainly deserving of the attention he is given in this class thus far. For Raz, it seems, the Concept of Law denotes an existing, particular category of thought and speech, rather than a tangible entity. The Concept of Law is described as an intermediary between individuals and the world, by which I presume is meant the larger body of ideas that make up the Concept of Law. Thus, the Concept of Law is really our Concept of Law, rather than The Concept of Law. What we are able to do then, by analyzing our Concept of Law, is to determine what is essential to it, that is to say, we can learn the criteria for judging whether a given set of rules is law.
That, however, seems anticlimactic, to be a bit churlish. There ought to be more at stake here, something more substantial than what boils down to little more than a scholarly tinker's manifest. Foreshadowing indicates that I am not alone in this line of thought. Intuitively, I gravitate toward Natural Law theory for answers here, though I have only a rough understanding of NL, and have read little concentrated work on the subject. The assigned reading for next week is Thomas Aquinas - will I find refuge there? I'm guessing as much, but isn't this fun? Everyone else in the entire world seems to have read everything Aquinas ever wrote - it smacks of a "little did he know".