Presented by the Theory Working Group.

Several prominent analytical legal theorists hold the view that the task of analytical jurisprudence is to identify the necessary features of law and leave discussion of contingent features to other disciplines. How should this view be assessed? In this paper I shall argue that a lack of emphasis on contingent relations and features of law both misrepresents some paradigm work in analytical jurisprudence, and worse, threatens to rigidify what are already paralyzing divisions between analytical jurisprudence and other theoretical approaches to understanding law. My aim is to take some initial steps towards rebalancing the purposes and methods of analytical jurisprudence by pursuing its intersections and continuities with related disciplines.

MICHAEL GIUDICE is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at York University, Member of the Graduate Faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School, and Associate of the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security. He has studied at both the University of New Brunswick (BA Hons) and McMaster University (MA, PhD), and was also a Visiting Student in Analytic Legal Philosophy and a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Oxford. He has published several articles in the philosophy of law, and has just finished co-writing (with Keith Culver) Legality's Borders: An Essay in General Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, forthcoming Feb. 2010). (less info)