ABSTRACT

In this article, I address general jurisprudence's ‘dirty little secret' or its apparent tension with normative conceptions of democracy. I argue that this tension is not coincidental, but a historical byproduct of an anti–democratic vision of the public and its epistemic competence amongst key figures in the history of analytical jurisprudence. I turn to John Dewey to trace this history, and elaborate on Dewey's critique of John Austin and Henry Maine, and their shared attempt to discount the normative value and conceptual possibility of popular sovereignty via their insistence on the public's epistemic limitations. I argue that the anti–democratic components of their thought resurface in HLA Hart's jurisprudence and note specifically that Hart's hierarchical model of legal normativity, and his focus on officials as the locus of law's validity and normativity, reproduce features of Austin and Maine's accounts of law rooted in their respective critiques of popular democracy. I conclude by suggesting how Dewey's early critique of Austin and Maine can inform Lon Fuller's insistence on the public’s constitutive role in legal legitimation and validity, and may pave the way for a jurisprudence better attuned to the demands of democratic societies.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我将讨论一般法学的“肮脏的小秘密”，或者它与民主规范概念之间的明显张力。我认为，这种紧张关系并非巧合，而是公众反民主愿景及其在分析法学史上的关键人物之间的认知能力的历史副产品。我转向约翰·杜威追溯这段历史，并详细阐述杜威对约翰·奥斯汀和亨利·缅因的批评，以及他们通过坚持公众的认知局限来贬低人民主权的规范价值和概念可能性的共同尝试。我认为他们思想中的反民主成分在 HLA Hart 的法理学中重新出现，并特别指出 Hart 的法律规范性等级模型，他将官员视为法律有效性和规范性的中心，再现了奥斯汀和缅因州基于各自对大众民主批判的法律描述的特征。最后，我提出杜威对奥斯汀和缅因州的早期批评如何为朗富勒对公众在法律合法性和有效性中的构成性作用的坚持提供信息，并可能为更好地适应民主社会需求的法理学铺平道路。