Some Aspects of American Political Science
| Author | Wilfrid Harrison |
| Date | 01 January 1956 |
| Published date | 01 January 1956 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1956.tb00956.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
NOTES AND REVIEW ARTICLES
20
1
anti-positivist redoubts The proposal to ‘expel ethical ideas from an approach to law’,
and to have no truck with ‘abstract externally derived concepts’,1 rests on a doctrine which
proceeds by curious leaps and bounds. It
is
clearly stated by Olivecrona and Lundstedt.z
As
a scientific discipline the study of law cannot concern itself with ends. ‘We like an end
or
we don’t. We strive
for
it. We are uninterested. We strive against it. That is all.” The
rest is silence and psychology. From here it is argued that since legal phenomena are
located in the world
of
time and space, and of cause and effect, any theory which sees in
the binding force
of
law anything but
a
causal and psychological connexion
is
erecting an
‘ideological superstructure
on
objective
real it^'.^
What is interesting from the point of
view
of
terminology is that this makes Kelsen, the apostle of the pure theory of law, into
an anti-positivist who has dabbled in
a
normative world and attempted to ‘lift law above
the stream
of
social facts’.’
So
far one crumb of comfort which political and legal theorists in this country might
have gleaned has been their complete freedom from involvement in this type
of
argument.
The attention given by British philosophers to prescriptive language in its moral context
has had a good dcal to do with this. What is surprising is that until recently the effect
of
this preoccupation on jurisprudence has been
so
small? There is a clear opportunity here
for students
with
interests
in
both politics and law (whatever they call themselves) to bring
:i
greater clarity into the ‘characteristic’ language
of
legal theory. Nothing, though, is made
very
much
clearer or easier by beginning
to
wonder about what shall count as jurisprudence
and
what
as
political science. (We might.‘having been tempted into staking out two separate
jurisdictions, perhaps
find
ourselves compelled to set up Professors Rees and Montrose (say)
to function as a kind
of
inter-disciplinary
tribunal des
conpits.)
SOME
ASPECTS
OF
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE
’
WILFRID
HARRISON
Queen’s College. Oxford
THE
Brookings Lectures were inaugurated
in
1954
to
foster research in the social sciences.
The first series dealt with
Economics and Public Policy.
In this second series, given in
1955,
eight political scientists ‘were asked to review certain
of
the newer contributions
of
interest
to social scientists in the Washington area’. The eight political scientists are generally well
known in this country: they are Stephen
K.
Bailey, Herbert A. Simon, Robert A. Dahl.
Richard
C.
Snyder, Alfred de Grazia, Malcolm
Moos,
Paul
T.
David, and David
B.
Truman.
’
G. B.
J.
Hughes,
Jurisprrrdence
(1955),
p.
37.
’
See ‘Law and Justice’ in
Interpretations
of
Modern Legal Philosophy
(1947),
p.
450.
’
Olivecrona, op. cit., p.
549.
’
Hughes, op. cit., p.
81.
‘Kelsen can never deserve the title
of
positivist.’ Austin, however,
IS
on the right side of the pale presumably because his ‘habitual obedience’ is both ‘factual’
and ‘causal’.
Professor
H.
L. A. Hart’s ‘Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence’,
70
L.Q.R.
37,
is an
outstanding example of the type of interest which logicians and moral philosophers might
have been expected to have in legal concepts, but have not in fact on the whole displayed.
’
RESEARCH FRONTIERS
IN
POLITICS
AND
GOVERNMENT (Brookings Lec-
tures,
1955).
By
STEPHEN
K.
BAILEY
and others.
(The
Brookings
institution,
Washington,
D.C.
Pp. vii
+
240.
$2.75.)
Ibid.
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