What is Legal Theory?

Authors

  • Marietta Auer Instituto Max Planck de História do Direito e Teoria do Direito (Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, MPIeR). Frankfurt am Main. Alemanha https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3247-9066

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11117/rdp.v20i108.7725

Abstract

In recent years, legal theory has developed into a generic term for multidisciplinary legal thinking. Under the heading of legal theory, scholars have explored novel pathways to legal research by using insights and methodologies from a multitude of research fields ranging from cultural studies and economics to genetics and neuroscience. This development stands in contrast to the classic field definition of 20th-century legal theory and 19thcentury general jurisprudence. The classic view conceived both legal theory and its precursor, general jurisprudence, as deliberately anti-philosophical approaches to theoretical reflection on the general structures of positive law. More recently, however, a shift in the internal structure as well as the epistemic aims of legal scholarship has taken place. The present article analyses this development within the framework of the history and philosophy of science. It suggests that interdisciplinar knowledge is a vital and indeed intrinsic part of legal scholarship. An unchartered space nevertheless remains between the disciplinary and the multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary forms of legal knowledge. The recent shift in the research agenda of legal theory highlights this theoretical vacuum, and it is precisely here that the present article situates the potential for a philosophically sophisticated legal theory. It argues that legal theory can best fulfil its goal if it provides tools for multidisciplinar theorising as well as categories for critical reflection on the preconditions of legal epistemology. This essay thus presents legal theory as a philosophical theory of multidisciplinary jurisprudence.

 

KEYWORDS: legal theory; general jurisprudence; multidisciplinarity; philosophy of science; history of science

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Author Biography

Marietta Auer, Instituto Max Planck de História do Direito e Teoria do Direito (Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, MPIeR). Frankfurt am Main. Alemanha

Marietta Auer (1972) studied law, philosophy and sociology at the University of Munich and Harvard University. She completed both the first and second state legal examinations in 1995 and 1997, received her doctorate in law in 2003, her M.A. in philosophy and sociology in 2008, habilitated in 2012 and was granted the professorial teaching qualification for civil law, philosophy of law, commercial and corporate law, comparative law as well as European private law (all at the University of Munich). She received her LL.M. in 2000 and her S.J.D. in 2012 from Harvard University. In 2001 she received her license to practice as Attorney-at-Law in New York, USA. From 2013-2020, she held the chair for civil law and philosophy of law at the University of Giessen, and from 2016-2019, she served as dean of the law faculty. Since 2020, she is the director of the newly established Department for Multidisciplinary Theory of Law at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (formerly Max Planck Institute for European Legal History) (Frankfurt am Main) and is professor for private law as well as international and interdisciplinary foundations of law at the University of Giessen. She received offers for professorships at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg (2019, declined) and from the University of Bonn (2019, declined). The department was established on 1 September 2020 and is currently in development.

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Published

2024-01-31

How to Cite

Auer, M. (2024). What is Legal Theory? . Public Law, 20(108). https://doi.org/10.11117/rdp.v20i108.7725

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 108 (2023): Dossiê Temático "Desigualdades e Direitos Humanos: desafios nos sistemas de proteção constitucional e transnacional "

Section

Artigos Originais

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Direito Público

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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