Getting Real or Staying Positive: Legal Realism(s), Legal Positivism and the Prospects of Naturalism in Jurisprudence

The relationship between Legal Realism and Legal Positivism has been a recurrent source of debate. The question has been further complicated by the related difficulty of assessing the internal relationship between the two main original strands of Legal Realism: American and Scandinavian. This paper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ratio juris 2016-12, Vol.29 (4), p.535-555
Main Author: Holtermann, Jakob v. H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Jurisprudence
Positivism
Realism
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The relationship between Legal Realism and Legal Positivism has been a recurrent source of debate. The question has been further complicated by the related difficulty of assessing the internal relationship between the two main original strands of Legal Realism: American and Scandinavian. This paper suggests considering American and Scandinavian Realism as instantiations of forward‐looking and backward‐looking rule skepticism respectively. This distinction brings into sharp relief not only the fundamentally different relationship between each of these two Realist schools and Legal Positivism but also their equally different potentials as starting points for naturalizing jurisprudence.
ISSN:0952-1917
1467-9337
DOI:10.1111/raju.12071