Can Law Be Art?

29 Pages Posted: 5 Jan 2020

Date Written: October 1, 2014

Abstract

This article -- my part of a festschrift in my honor for which I will be forever grateful -- asks, as other have, if law can be art. The answer it offers is "yes," but with the qualification that we recover a sense of law's connection to truth as aletheia as I argue in the article. To make this argument I examine the painting in the Chauvet Cave as a way of understanding what being "art" means and how it can be connected to truth, and then examine a recovery of art's connection to truth in the work of Kandinsky as guidance for a recovery of the same in law.

Note: I'll post a shorter version of this, one presented as a paper at ASLCH in 2015 without footnotes and supporting materials, later on. Please note that the color prints are missing from this version. They are available online.

Keywords: law as art, aesthetics, Chauvet, Kandinsky, Heidegger, truth, aletheia, painting, Klee, justice, beauty, legal ethics, jurisprudence, Hegel, internal, external, ontology, cultural realism

Suggested Citation

Sammons, Jack Lee, Can Law Be Art? (October 1, 2014). Mercer Law Review, Vol. 66, p. 527, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2606021

Jack Lee Sammons (Contact Author)

Mercer University School of Law ( email )

Walter F. George School of Law
1021 Georgia Ave.
Macon, GA 31207-0001
United States
4783192989 (Phone)
478-301-2259 (Fax)

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