Legal nominalists treat law and obligation as myths to be discarded

Evidence

Certain lawyers (we may call them “nominalists”) urge that we solve these problems by ignoring them. In their view the concepts of “legal obligation” and “the law” are myths, invented and sustained by lawyers for a dismal mix of conscious and subconscious motives. The puzzles we find in these concepts are merely symptoms that they are myths. They are unsolvable because unreal, and our concern with them is just one feature of our enslavement. — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 11

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names and characterizes the nominalist position Dworkin will argue against, a key adversary in his theory.
• XREF: These nominalists resemble American Legal Realism and later critical/skeptical jurisprudences that Dworkin opposes. — connects to: Of course the suggestion that we stop talking about ‘the law’ and ‘legal obligation’ is mostly bluff. These concepts are too deeply cemented into the structure of our political practices-they cannot be given up like cigarettes or hats. Some of the nominalists have half-admitted this and said that the myths they condemn should be thought of as Platonic myths and retained to seduce the masses into order. This is perhaps not so cynical a suggestion as it seems; perhaps it is a covert hedging of a dubious bet.; Day in and day out we send people to jail, or take money away from them, or make them do things they do not want to do, under coercion of force, and we justify all of this by speaking of such persons as having broken the law or having failed to meet their legal obligations, or having interfered with other people’s legal rights. Even in clear cases (a bank robber or a willful breach of contract), when we are confident that someone had a legal obligation and broke it, we are not able to give a satisfactory account of what that means, or why that entitles the state to punish or coerce him. We may feel confident that what we are doing is proper, but until we can identify the principles we are following we cannot be sure that they are sufficient, or whether we are applying them consistently. In less clear cases, when the issue of whether an obligation has been broken is for some reason controversial, the pitch of these nagging questions rises, and our responsibility to find answers deepens.; These concepts are too deeply cemented into the structure of our political practices-they cannot be given up like cigarettes or hats. Some of the nominalists have half-admitted this and said that the myths they condemn should be thought of as Platonic myths and retained to seduce the masses into order. (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Concepts of law and legal obligation must stay until shown illusory #contradicts (0.80) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 17
• Nominalist legal theory reduces to an attack on mechanical jurisprudence #expands (0.60) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 20
• Law’s neutrality is a myth; legal practice emerges from culture #expands (0.55) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 643
• Debunking legal concepts first requires a theory of how we actually use them #qualifies (0.50) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 12
• Legal systems rest on customary social rules rather than moral foundations #contradicts (0.50) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 56