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

7. The Quest For a Core
"but there ain't-a-going to be no core" (Mark Twain) 1
Sociologists of knowledge tell us that some disciplines are convergent
tightly-knit communities "in terms of their fundamental
ideologies, their common values, their shared judgements of quality,
their awareness of belonging to a unique tradition . . . {and} are
likely to occupy territories with well-defined external boundaries." 2
Others are centrifugal.
At some points in the history of the Anglo-American tradition,
law as an academic discipline could have been described as cohesive
and centripetal: the object of study was legal rules and the role
of the jurist was to systematise, to rationalise, and to expound legal
doctrine. However, at no stage was this view unchallenged. As we
have seen, from the late nineteenth century in the United States,
much later in England, the predominant view came under regular
and increasingly open attack from critics who seemed to have little
in common except a shared sense of dissatisfaction with the prevailing
orthodoxy.
It should not be surprising to find in an expanding discipline: (i)
few who accept the idea of an autonomous discipline in a strong
sense; (ii) increasing pluralism, including differentiation of specialisms
and multiplicity of perspectives; and, per contra, (iii) scholars
agonising and debating about the nature of their enterprise: is it in
any way unique or distinctive? What are its parameters? Does it
have a centre or core or essence?
In the current intellectual climate, it is tempting to dismiss questions
about the core or essence of a discipline as misguided or
plain silly, to be treated no more seriously than the quest for a
non-existent Holy Grail or where the rainbow ends. Why assume
that Law—or History or Sociology—has or should have a settled
core? I am inclined to share such scepticism, but the theme is sufficiently
persistent and there is enough at stake to make it worth
looking at some salient examples of attempts to define the core in
153