5 otázek pro právní filozofy

Biografie HLA Harta od Nicoly Lacey, o které jsem tady psal, může být posměšně označována za "Harta pro blbečky", mě však přitáhla k právnímu pozitivismu. V září by měla vyjít kniha, která by mohla mít podobné ambice: kolekce rozhovorů s některými významnými právními filozofy dneška (Robert Alexy, Tom Campbell, Jules Coleman, Antony Duff, John Gardner, Ruth Gavison, Leslie Green, Andrew von Hirsch, Tony Honoré, Douglas Husak, Nicola Lacey, Brian Leiter, David Lyons, Neil MacCormick, Mark Murphy, Stanley L. Paulson, Stephen Perry, Fred Schauer, Scott Shapiro, Nicos Stavropoulos). Těm editoři položili pětici otázek, které nabízejí zajímavý vhled do myšlení právních filozofů.

Pokračování na samostatné stránce -
1. Why were you initially drawn to the philosophy of law?
2. For which of your contribution(s) to legal philosophy so far would you most like to be remembered, and why?
3. What are the most important issues in legal philosophy, and why are they distinctively issues of legal philosophy rather than some other discipline?
4. What is the relationship between legal philosophy and legal practice? Should legal philosophers be more concerned about the effect of their scholarship on legal practice?
5. To which problem, issue or broad area of legal philosophy would you most like to see more attention paid in the future?

Na stránce knihy je možné najít urývky některých odpovědí, Brian Leiter pak zpřístupnil celé interview na svých stránkách SSRN.

O svém prvním ročníku na Michiganu (kde kromě práva studoval také filozofii) Leiter říká:

The first year of law school I found quite uninspiring. I had a couple of intellectually serious and engaging teachers—James Krier (in property law) and James J. White (in contracts) stand out—but the others were quite feeble as pedagogues and sometimes as intellects. But having committed to law study, I naturally thought to engage points of intersection between law and philosophy. A course by Frederick Schauer on "Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies" was quite important in shaping my interests. In the Realists, I found the jurisprudential analogues, as it were, of Nietzsche: thinkers who were sceptical, irreverent about the "received wisdom," who had no patience for moralistic nonsense, and who were ready to report unpleasant truths.

Přesně vystihuje důvody, pro které mi je realismus blízký: kritický přístup k nastoleným a nezpochybňovaným "pravdám". Vřele doporučuji Leiterovu knihu Naturalizing Jurisprudence. Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy.

Zajímavý protipól(?) nabízí John Gardner, profesor jurisprudence tady v Oxfordu:

I turned out to be good at law, and soon lived comfortably enough on a diet of cases and statutes. In my first year I was lucky to be taught by outstanding academic lawyers, and I quickly picked up the dark arts. I was a natural advocate with a contrarian taste in arguments and I saw myself becoming a barrister. I only started to acquire a rival, more scholarly self-image about a year later, when Nicola Lacey arrived from London to take over as my main law tutor and mentor at New College. Niki’s multidisciplinary interests and wide-ranging contributions to academic life had a lasting positive impact on me. As my jurisprudence teacher, she encouraged me to experiment with ideas. She introduced me enthrallingly to analytical philosophy of law, of which she had a formidable grasp, but she also served up tasty morsels from other philosophical traditions and indeed from other disciplines. At the start of my third year, she encouraged me to defect for a term from the Law Faculty to the Philosophy Faculty, taking a course of ethics tutorials with Jonathan Glover. Jonathan in turn worked his magic on me. Like many law students I was a card-carrying moral relativist. I thought law was somehow (how?) more real than morality. In four weeks Jonathan took me and my moral relativism to the edge of a nihilistic precipice, pointing out down below the hell that awaited me: unobjectionable mass-murderers, unimpeachable rapists, unchallengeable racists. Then he spent four weeks bringing me back from the edge, a reformed character. Never again would I flirt with any kind of relativism. Eight tutorials with Jonathan Glover is the law student’s equivalent of eight weeks in rehab.

Každopádně nepochybuji, že kniha nabídne velmi zajímavé čtení a přitáhne své čtenáře k dílům zpovídaných autorů. Docela by se mi líbila podobná kniha v češtině - třeba s pěticí "nejvlivnějších českých právníků".