Law, Objectivity And Truth: A Cathedral View

Abstract

Matters about the logical objectivity of law are closely related to the legitimacy of law as a social institution and its adjudicative processes. It is reasoned for example that if law is independent of individual preferences, then it can command normativeness and guarantee impartiality in application. While the controversy about whether the normative character of law requires rational justification or should be taken as objectively valid has occupied “the separability thesis” in jurisprudence, this paper argues that such a stance is an error-analysis that contributes little to the objective character of law. Rather the argument put forward here is that the logical ordering of law is intricately connected with philosophical analysis of objectivity, truth and meaning than with the nature of law and morality, often pigeon in the dichotomy between legal positivism and objectivity on one hand, natural law theory and subjective on the other hand, as most academic lawyers unschooled in the finer points of contemporary jurisprudence would have us think. It concludes that law is objective in its peculiar way both in its nature, content and procedures notwithstanding that certain evaluative externalities make this practically challenging.