Intellection and Indiscipline

Author: Goodrich, Peter

Source: Journal of Law and Society, Volume 36, Number 4, December 2009 , pp. 460-480(21)

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Abstract:

A discipline will usually become the object of study and its relationship to other disciplines a moment of concern when its borders are precarious and its definition in dispute. Law, `the oldest social science', is arguably both prior to discipline — it emerges initially and most forcefully as a practice — and without discipline, its object being potentially all human behaviour. If law is necessarily between and among disciplines, both prone to moonlighting and everywhere homeless, it will also always be in some mode of scholarly crisis. Certain conclusions follow. Law is paradoxically dependent upon other disciplines for its access to the domains that it regulates. The greater its epistemic dependency, however, the slighter its political acknowledgment of that subordination. Which allows a positive thesis: the epistemic drift of law can carry the discipline to a frank acknowledgment of the value of indiscipline both to novelty and intellection.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00479.x

Affiliations: 1: Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, Brookdale Center, 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, United States of America., Email: goodrich@yu.edu

Publication date: 2009-12-01