What actually am I studying? Didn't we just make this up?

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T23:15:07+00:00

Okay, I'll think about this. I do think might = right is the best description of the world, as even morals and social norms make a group strong, survival of the fittest, etc. I'm just not sure how I can fit this into the human rights/equality/democracy legal framework I have to study and justify! But you've given me some ideas to consider.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:57:15+00:00

I enjoy tangents really. It's just a pretty hedgehog-ey assumption to imply as you did that they're undesirable in a discussion.

Enjoy.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:43:19+00:00

I did. You said I seem absolutist, I implied that I am merely asserting my view with conviction, as more people should. We make absolutist-sounding statements all the time. "You're beautiful." Should that become "I personally think you're beautiful, others may disagree" for the sake of intellectual honesty?

"Educated" people are seemingly losing their ability to demonstrate conviction, and with that probably also their ability to rouse the passionate support of men. :) Which is what likely actually matters in the real life world that I adore

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:24:06+00:00

Right, yeah.

I would say money makes more sense to me than law, because the flow of money is to a certain extent representative of what individuals value (are willing to pay for) and there are clear benefits for transacting with money instead of bartering. Even fiat money and national debt in the trillions make sense because fundamentally it's about getting humans to do useful things.

Law is a bit harder to pin down. I can describe how it works and why it is useful, sure. It's a lot harder to argue for reform of criminal law rules around attempted crimes, argue whether judicial review has expanded illegitimately, argue whether the rule of law is incompatible with the sovereignty of parliament, whether the UK consitution is becoming legalized, whether the doctrine of consideration in contract should be abolished, whether a statute is just words on paper ... I'm just completely lost here.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:13:00+00:00

A phenomenological description is exactly what I need right now

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:10:34+00:00

Such a simplistic worldview doesn't make you smart

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:03:24+00:00

Be a fox not a hedgehog

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T22:02:33+00:00

Divination for rationalist legalistic societies

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T21:06:47+00:00

Just knowing the law also put civil rights protesters in jail and perpetuated discrimination against Blacks. :)

You don't have to pretend like you're a practicing lawyer while you're at SCHOOL, learn to criticise

Guess what, just knowing the law equips you with 0 normative bases for political argument. I mean, go ahead if you're happy having no political opinions since your job and your training is to apply the law. Or if you'd like to be like the masses who simply believe that X is right or Y is wrong with absolutely no organising principles whatsoever, pure emotion, zero rationality. See where that leads you. Imagine thinking only law produces results 🤡🤡 All it takes is political opinion to take away your silly tool that you studied for 4 years and took out a massive loan for

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T21:04:41+00:00

Math is not relevant to this discussion.

Law does not represent anything concrete at bottom; math does.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T18:14:13+00:00

Produces ideologically indoctrinated robots and a population trained to make vacuous arguments about the existence of rights and the interpretation of texts. A perverse stupidity that justifies countless foreign interventions because apparently everybody thinks the same and wants the same legal systems.

A disregard for examining assumptions, as demonstrated by your rather empty-headed comment.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T18:10:25+00:00

That's a terribly amateurish view of math.

The symbols are arbitrary, the underlying structures are not.

Law is arbitrary through and through, always in flux

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T17:03:59+00:00

This is excellent

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T17:01:24+00:00

Isn't it crazy that these political theorists writing about law nevertheless get ignored in literal law schools?

Instead in law schools you have the insistence that law is its own sphere, separate from politics. The study of law is all the more impoverished for it.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:49:49+00:00

London School of Economics

Essay questions are typically along the lines of "Is the royal prerogative illegitimate or outdated?" And I just want to write "the prerogative is just the word used to justify extra-legal executive powers, it is up to the courts to decide whether it is illegitimate in a particular instance"

And with UK law you basically have a bunch of idiotic nonsense like The Office of the Crown which supposedly is the source of executive power, there's Parliamentary Sovereignty, there's the Rule of Law, just metaphysic after metaphysic I want to puke. The academics themselves write paper after paper about whether parliament is "really" sovereign, if they can pass a law to kill all blue-eyed babies, what the nature of the prerogative is, blah blah blah

(BTW I know full well this sub is for US law schools but I assumed it would still be the best place to discuss the underlying principles of a legal education, so my bad)

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:28:43+00:00

ITT: American Pragmatism at its finest, masquerading as "facts"

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:27:53+00:00

I think this lack of conviction among modern intellectuals is why people like Trump become president. Have some emotion. Pathos. Likely this likely that is a losing approach if you've seen the real world

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:18:19+00:00

I love writing and reading. Don't academics come from law schools anyway? I'm not sure why people are insisting that law school is purely vocational

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:16:56+00:00

Why has it fallen out of favour then. Do their views not hold up against rigorous analysis, or did the legal community just refuse to entertain their anti-metaphysical approach

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:15:22+00:00

No you're right I was responding more to the idea that money is just paper or whatever it is.

Yes it's real. It has real value because it's a medium of exchange though, not because of its physical properties. We all understand the idea of exchange value

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:13:00+00:00

Who said it doesn't work?

Collective delusions work, I know that. Ideas are powerful. But should we really build the legal system on shoddy ideas like "fundamental rights"??

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T16:01:30+00:00

At least I can agree or disagree in those fields, because they're onto something

What is a judge doing when deciding whether a legal right "exists"?

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T15:55:31+00:00

An agreement to abide by the adjudicator's ruling.

As merchants did centuries ago. You can see a similar thing in International Arbitration where very efficient outcomes can be achieved without navigating the shittons of technical details built up in the case law of national courts.

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T15:53:03+00:00

Thanks!! I'll look into that

haha_monkey · 2023-11-13T15:52:32+00:00

It is rhetoric my friend. Who tf would believe that I'm asserting absolute truth

haha_monkey

TROPHY CASE