Speaking of "impotent rage" and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, there was an amazing display of both on Twitter last week, all prompted by Stephen Sachs, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, sharing on Twitter his syllabus for his "reading group" in jurisprudence, whose stated aim was to address "the nature of law and legal obligation, the relationship between law and morals, and the role that philosophical issues can or should play in the actual practice of law." His syllabus was completely reasonable (as any expert could tell you), although it certainly included texts I would not assign, and omitted some I usually do assign: but that is hardly surprising. The point is the syllabus was perfectly appropriate for the topics and the level of instruction (i.e., this was not meant to be an advanced course in jurisprudence).
The syllabus, however, provoked an orgy of online stupidity and anti-intellectualism because most of the authors were (guess what?) "white men." Most of the authors, of course, were actually Jews, many of whom lived through the period in academia when no one considered them "white men," but we put this little irony to one side. Alex Green, an international lawyer on the law faculty at the University of York, got things started with this remarkable outburst:
As I observed on Twitter:
The giveaway is that Green actually has the audacity to say that the topics Professor Sachs is covering do not constitute "real jurisprudence," which is tantamount to confirming he knows nothing about the subject. I take it what he really means to say is he's not interested in the core topics in general jurisprudence, but in something else that he thinks of as jurisprudential. That's fine, and not notable, but then he should avoid smearing those who are interested in general jurisprudence
Even weirder was an intervention by an emeritus professor of law at Birkbeck, a specialist in "Lacan and legal theory" (seriously) (Birkbeck is one of the weaker UK law faculties, and certainly the flakiest), who announced on Twitter that "students uneasy with law look to Jurisprudence for the langauge and methods to express their misgivings. Finding only Hart & Dworkin there, suggests to them there's no room for critique let alone change." Put aside the weird assumption about why students might study jurisprudence, as I noted on Twitter this comment reveals "amazing ignorance," since as I wrote, "One of the central points of the positivist theory of law [going back to Bentham!] is that what the law is says nothing about whether it should be obeyed, defended, etc. It opens the space for critique. That's why [the communist legal theorist] Pashukanis was a positivist!" (See, e.g. Even Dworkin's theory of law builds in critique via the justification component of constructive interpretation.) Our Lacan specialist replied by changing the topic, assuring her followers that she had read Hart (but obviously didn't understand it) but "found them [Hart and Dworkin] uninspiring." Like Alex Green, she is entitled to her opinion about what is interesting or inspiring, but that's not what she said originally: she said, falsely, that Hart leaves "no room for critique," which is absurd and ignorant. (Unlike Green, our Lacan specialist decided that criticizing her ignorance reflected sexism. Green did not have that lazy rhetorical trope available to him.)
Less ignorant, but still revealing, was this comment (with my reply) from a law professor at SOAS in London:
Alas, Professor Kumar did not reply to my comment, no doubt because it is obviously correct. There is lots of interesting writing in the world, but not all of it is relevant to a course in general jurisprudence. Unfortunately, for a certain feeble-minded academic like Green or our Lacan specialist, "jurisprudence" is more of an emotive term, that is supposed to pick out what they happen to find interesting.
UPDATE: I had a brief exchange on Twitter with one of Green's former teachers at UCL (not, I hasten to add, Kevin Toh or George Letsas), who dismissed my criticisms as "ridiculous" and vouched for Green's knowledge of jurisprudence by the dreaded "white, male Anglosphere." Loyalty to former students is a virtue, but I did have to ask how he would "explain [Green's] comments about Professor Sachs's syllabus? Do you think you can address topics like 'the nature of law and legal obligation' without reading Hart and Dworkin? I'm curious." As I added, "you can't possibly agree with [Green's tweet], so I'm wondering what you think about the merits of what's actually being discussed." His telling response: "I think the problem with your post is that you're mistaking Twitter banter - the framing of a posting with an eye on rhetorical impact - for a precisely articulated intellectual position." So false and idiotic claims are mere "Twitter banter." Certainly the "rhetorical impact" of dismissing the core of general jurisprudence as "dull" work produced by white men, and not "real jurisprudence," has rhetorical impact. It's also foolish, as I said originally. In any case, I appreciate this admission even by the former teacher who was vouching for Green's knowledge of white, male jurisprudence.
ANNALS OF SELF-DECEPTION: A reader points out that our Lacan specialist, above, has now tweeted this:
Reminder to fellow critical theorists: decades since we appeared in the academy and still the only way "traditionalists" engage with critical work is hurling insults and gratuitous jibes. If that doesn't prove the impotence of their own methods and dogmas I don't know what will.
It is a bit sad that she needs to believe this is what's going on here. I wrote a doctoral dissertation on Nietzsche (and two books since), am finishing a co-authored book on Marx, have published on Foucault and Heidegger and Freud, co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, and have spent decades defending and developing legal realist jurisprudence. If only this were the "traditionalist" profile of my discipline! Unfortunately for the "Lacan and legal theory" person, I really dislike absurdly false statements about jurisprudence, even under the guise of "Twitter banter" or "critical work."
ANOTHER: I take it one reason this weird underbelly of UK law twitter has been up in arms about this is because many of them think of "jurisprudence" as a compulsory module, whereas the Sachs seminar was clearly an elective. What should be taught in a compulsory module is an interesting question, one which the anti-intellectual abuse of Sachs and his syllabus sheds no light on. One thing should be clear: choosing (or not choosing) authors because of their race and gender is a violation of one's duties as a scholar and teacher. It's quite clear many of these silly people think otherwise.
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