PHIL 2260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Legal Certainty, Case Method, Legal Realism
27 Mar 2018
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Legal philosophy should have the explicit focus of understanding the operation of the law on day-to-day basis, in the hands of living judges, lawyers, and police. Judges must set aside their views/morals and apply the law coldly. Judges have an obligation to bring the law into conformity with the current consensus in society. La(cid:449) should (cid:271)e seen from the perspective of the bad man: legal study should involve an internal perspective and an external perspective. In making legal judgements judges should avoid using their own politics, reconcile the law with positive morality and incorporate social scientific methods to evaluate the consequences of different legal decisions. Judges should begin with the facts and law and then deduce a conclusion. Llewellyn" legal reali m: functional variant of legal realism the view that the law should be understood in terms of its specific social function, like any institution in society.
