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Michael Giudice, Understanding The Nature of Law: A Case for Constructive Conceptual Explanation

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.3366/elr.2016.0381
Date01 September 2016
Published date01 September 2016
Pages415-416
Author

During the past century, Common Law scholars have often commended analytical jurisprudence as the best method available for the study of law. Yet, analytical jurisprudence fell from grace at the close of the twentieth century as it was overshadowed by new approaches based on the works of philosophers such as Quine and Kripke, among others. Conceptual analysis, trademark of analytical jurisprudence, came under severe criticism as insufficient or useless to explain its own object of inquiry.

This is the context of Michael Giudice's Understanding the Nature of Law: A Case for Constructive Conceptual Explanation. Through ten chapters, divided in three sections, Giudice defends analytical jurisprudence. His aim is to “save the heart of the goal of analytical jurisprudence and preserve some of its methods, while reframing the goal and reforming those methods to account for criticisms whose merits cannot be rejected” (4). His claim is straightforward: analytical jurisprudence is not dead and it still constitutes a formidable methodology to explain and understand law. Yet, in order to ensure that analytical jurisprudence abides by its promise, Giudice argues that it must reconsider its object of study and approach it differently. It cannot develop solely from the identification of the necessary features and relations of law, a task for conceptual explanation; it needs also to take into account those contingent features and specific relations that are critical for a deeper understanding of the different experiences of law. This task, in his view, constitutes the method of constructive conceptual explanation, which aims at “the construction of new and improved concepts for use in explaining social reality” (38). Giudice turns to constructivism as the philosophical method that will inform his claims. Through constructive conceptual explanation Giudice seeks to introduce a method to revise and expand long-standing concepts in ways responsive to new challenges.

The strategy is innovative, as Giudice does not try to discredit or confront the critics of analytic jurisprudence. Rather, he acknowledges their merits and uses them to further the trajectory of his own argument. Critiques are bright spots that mark the direction along which analytical jurisprudence should travel in order to achieve its goals. Following Giudice's main thesis, conceptual explanation is not the goal of analytic philosophy but only the beginning. The main task lies rather in the philosophical...

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