Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Advance Access published online on June 26, 2009
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, doi:10.1093/ojls/gqp010
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Abstraction and the Rule of Law
Correspondence: *Law School, University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Email: William.Lucy{at}manchester.ac.uk. Some work on this article was carried out at the John Fleming Centre for the Advancement of Legal Research, College of Law, Australian National University, Australia. Thanks to Michael Coper, Dean of the College of Law, and Peter Cane, Director of the Centre, for their hospitality. Thanks also to Jane Stapleton, Leighton McDonald and other members of the Centre for improvements to an early draft, to colleagues at a University of Manchester Law School seminar and to Dora Kostakopoulou, John Murphy, Mark Bennett, the OJLS editor and referee(s).
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Abstract |
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This article tackles two issues: the nature of law's judgment and what, if anything, might be said in its favour. As to the first issue, the article reminds lawyers of the obvious, namely, that law's judgment is abstract, elucidating both what this entails and why it may be thought problematic. The main burden of the article is to consider what might be said in favour of law's abstract judgment. Only one family of arguments, part of a wider but still not all-encompassing class, are considered here: arguments from the rule of law ideal. Three different arguments from the rule of law are examined, the conclusion being that two of three cannot provide unproblematic and unambiguous support for law's abstract judgment.