Duellism in Modern American Jurisprudence

Posted: 28 Aug 2000

See all articles by David Gray Carlson

David Gray Carlson

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Abstract

In his body of work, most recently exhibited in The Enchantment of Reason and Laying Down the Law: Mysticism, Fetishism, and the American Legal Mind, Professor Pierre Schlag contends that law fails to signify anything real and, thus, does not exist. From this follows Schlag's pugnacious attack on the legal practitioner as a distorted subject, the law professor and the judge as tools of an oppressive legal bureaucracy, and legal scholarship as a worthless pursuit. In this Review Essay, Professor David Gray Carlson attempts to vindicate the practice of law and of legal scholarship. Using the perspectives of Hegel and Lacan, Carlson shows that while law may have a complicated relation to justice, law nevertheless exists. With law so defended, Professor Carlson makes the case that we should not and could not, as Schlag suggests, "lay down the law."

Suggested Citation

Carlson, David Gray, Duellism in Modern American Jurisprudence. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=213095

David Gray Carlson (Contact Author)

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ( email )

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New York, NY 10003
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212-790-0210 (Phone)
212-790-0205 (Fax)

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