[Wittrs] Re: Law and Politics

From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
To: LAWCOURT-L@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:57:59 -0800 (PST)
Mark:

What is the impetus for this view? I might misunderstand it, but it seems 
Wittgensteinian to me. When people try to speak of "law and politics" in 
any sense when it is: (a) not a slogan; and (b) analytical -- one feels as 
though there is a feigning going on. A sort of fake boundary. You see this 
because the speakers rarely can provide acceptable examples that distinguish 
the one from the other, and quite frequently "mug" the one of the ideas. I've 
always found this linguistic cocktail to be of the most unfortunate kind 
that causes immense confusion. 

(Similar language games: ideology and rationality). 

Your call to abolish a contrived fence is surely good. But I would hope someone 
in your capacity would further call for people in this discipline to think 
deeply (at the level of examples) when they use these words. If we're talking 
"law," we're really only talking about either casuistry or language from a 
justific standpoint. And if we're talking about "politics," we're really only 
talking about the distribution of valuables and the condition of power.  People 
need to see that the marriage of these two family-resemblances does absolutely 
NOTHING to abolish the other. And if people didn't think speciously about 
casuistry,  language, or justification, for example, they wouldn't allow their 
inquiries into power and its condition to assume that such concerns rule all 
other concepts in the lexicon. 

But I'm uncertain if this is really what you are saying. Because from my 
lights, what you should be saying here is this: should the discipline be 
perspectival? Isn't that the real issue? Isn't the real issue whether political 
science wants to be Machiavelli with math? You know, to be "ideology-creation 
scientists" -- to run around looking for devils, so to speak? Because it seems 
to be that the moment you ask political scientists to stop languaging in 
certain ways, that you have really asked them accept that "politics" not be a 
competitor (or opposite) to such ideas as truth, beauty, casuistry, principle 
and the like. Of course, this cuts both ways. because what you are also saying 
-- which is inevitably true, of course -- is that species of politics lives 
even within the highest examples of ethics and aesthetics. What I want to say 
is: God can be as much involved in politics as the Devil can "principle." 

But I just hope in asking the discipline to abandon a facile and shallow fence, 
and in encouraging deeper thinking, you are also calling upon those who see the 
mission of political science as showing "politics rules" -- that they, too, 
should get their linguistic house in order.       

Would you be so kind as to tell the list when your paper is done? I know I for 
one would like to read it.

Regards and thanks 

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html 




----- Original Message ----
From: "Graber, Mark" <MGraber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: LAWCOURT-L@xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thu, February 11, 2010 9:04:33 AM
Subject: Law and Politics

May I suggest (and this is trying out a theme for a forthcoming essay) that we 
obliterate the line between law and politics, without obliterating what some 
people are trying to do with the distinction.  I have a great many textbooks on 
American politics.  Does everyone on this list agree that the American Politics 
text ought to have a section on courts?  Does everyone on this list agree that 
the American Politics text ought not be divided into one chapter on courts and 
one chapter on everything else?

If this is correct than we might talk about judicial politics, bureaucratic 
politics, electoral politics, legislative politics, etc.  We might note that 
the connections between different forms of politics and the distinctiveness of 
different forms of (or fora for) politics.  I suspect we will get more mileage 
thinking in these terms than thinking abotu sharp differences between law and 
the rest of the undifferentiated political world.  (consider that we might 
learn a good deal about some of the items below by asking why did the Supreme 
Court issue a unanimous opinion in Cooper, when neither the Senate nor Congress 
could muster moe than a 2/3s vote on the subject).




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[Wittrs] Re: Law and Politics

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