Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

Legal Scholarship and the Roles of the Jurist
18 Professor Aubrey Diamond undertook a less ambitious general survey in 1978,
"Research in Law: A Report to the Council of the S.P.T.L." (1979) SPTL Newsletter,
No. 13 (March 1979) pp. 1-18; there has since been a more detailed report on
socio-legal studies by the Economic and Research Council: Review of Socio-legal
Studies: Final Report (1994). Several Heads of Law Schools kindly gave me access
to their submissions to the Universities Funding Council for the 1992 Research
Assessment exercise and these generally support the theme of diversity.
" Law from Oxford University Press, January-June, 1994. (Catalogue, dealing
almost entirely with new publications): During the period Jan.-March, 1994 I
received catalogues from over 20 U.K. publishers who maintain significant lists
in law.
20 See above, Chap. 2.
21 Above, Chap. 1.
22 On the importance of clarifying standpoint, role and context as a preliminary to
such exercises see HDTWR Chap. 2 and ANALYSIS, pp. 120-121.
23 The current emphasis on "skills" includes direct, usually elementary teaching
of such operations as interviewing, negotiating, drafting, cross-examination, and
"counselling" in different simulated contexts. This is specifically related to preparation
for practice and is a relatively recent development. See below, Chap.
7, section (d).
24 R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (1939) Chap. 7; The Idea of History
(1946).
25 e.g. D. N. MacCormick, H.L.A. Hart (1981), Chap. 3.
26 In the Anglo-American system during this century there has been a strong tendency
to move away from general towards (more-or-less) particular jurisprudence:
for example, to be more concerned with American legal thought or common law
reasoning than with legal thought and legal reasoning in general. This is a theme
for another occasion.
27 Even legal theory is affected by this tendency. For example, Jeremy Bentham's
Science of Legislation offers guidance to law-makers; Karl Llewellyn explicitly
developed prescriptive working-theories for appellate judges and advocates.
When Holmes suggested that law students should adopt the standpoint of the
Bad Man, he can be interpreted as criticising the tendency of academic lawyers
to identify too closely with appellate court judges and other participants in the
higher reaches of the legal system and to neglect the more down-to-earth perspectives
and situations of ordinary citizens and office lawyers. Ronald Dworkin
builds not only his theory of adjudication, but his whole interpretative legal
theory around a model judge, Hercules, who works within a given system. Hercules
not only provides a role model for actual judges, but also represents all
those who are concerned with correct interpretation of law. One does not need
to accept Dworkin's particular theory of interpretation and argumentation to
agree with him that these are activities undertaken by participants within particular
legal systems. See below, Chap. 7.
28 Becher, op. cit., at pp. 5, 8, 30-31.
29 John W. Cairns, "Blackstone, an English Institutist: Legal literature and the rise
of the nation-state", (1984) 4 Oxford Jo. of Legal Studies 318.
30 Of course, Blackstone had some notable forerunners, for example, Hale, Wood,
Finch and Gilbert.
31 1 Comm. 27.
32 J. Bentham, A Fragment on Government (ed. Burns and Hart, CW, 1977), Preface,
at p. 397.
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