[Wittrs] The language games of judicial politics
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:12:34 -0700 (PDT)
(Addressing the question of whether actions taken by the New Jersey Supreme
Court are "political." It concerns a dispute between the Governor and the Court
over, I think, spending for education. Some posters believe the Court decision
"political;" others defend the esteemed, non-partisan nature of the Court's
culture).
... another view would go something like this:
Disputes about whether the casuistry or its administration in the NJ Court is
"political" is a language game destined for traffic accidents. Before one could
ever navigate this idea, one would need to share the other's sense of
"political" before an exchange of facts and impressions could even occur.
And even here, there is still another danger. And that is that charge and
defense of the idea stem ultimately from a framework orientation not unlike the
ones people have about, say: protestantism-catholicism; realism-idealism;
materialism-dualism; and so forth.
And that, therefore, when some political scientists or "crits" or "realists"
feel a sense of "aghast" upon hearing the idea that a court could be
"apolitical," they don't seem to hear it as only a particular sense of
expression at work in the operation of a given framework. Just as the others
might not realize that those political scientists who object so vehemently are
probably much more Machiavellian in how they see their discipline -- as opposed
to, say, Platonic (see The Republic).
And so, what seems on the surface to be something to disagree about, is, at is
core, only a fight about which picture of the world one wants others to have.
Or perhaps, which language frames to use to speak of about it. Therefore, if we
could see that charges of "that's political" ultimately stem from a picture of
the world we have chosen, we could at least begin to address the issue of how
the situation of X gets spoken of across frameworks, so as to discuss X and not
which language we like.
Yours, forever Wittgensteinian.
(P.S. Sent to Wittrs)
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
[spoiler]Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/authorY6860
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
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