Nils Jansen - The Point of View of Legal Science
On 10/03/2022, Nils Jansen (Münster) will present his paper 'The Point of View of Legal Science'. The seminar will take place in the Massey Room, Balliol College and will start at 17:00.
Abstract
In my presentation I intend to define an appropriate point of view for doctrinal legal scholarship. I will argue that this perspective cannot be the view from outside of an observer of the legal system, but rather a genuinely legal point of view. It is, however, neither the perspective of practical lawyers or judges. The task of legal practitioners is to administer a legal system and to decide legal cases. They therefore have to identify with their legal system; they work with established concepts, argue on the basis of established doctrine, and follow precedents. Practitioners have to keep the legal system reliable; they have to put a high value on legal certainty and do not usually think about alternatives. The point of view of scholars, in contrast, is defined by a specific academic distance from legal practice. Doctrinal legal scholarship seek new doctrinal knowledge and a better understanding of legal systems and legal doctrine; hence scholars have to reflect on what is going on in the law; they have to think about spectra of alternative solutions, and they are asked to design concepts and other doctrinal tools which may work better in legal practice. I will show that German legal scholarship is today facing a crisis which results from the fact that during the 20th century, German legal academia has lost this specific distance to legal practice which until 1900 had been a matter of course.