The front pages of our newspapers and the lead stories on the evening news bear witness to the divorce of law from justice. The rich and famous get away with murder; Fortune 500 corporations operate sweatshops with impunity; blue-chip energy companies that spoil the environment and sicken communities face mere fines that don't dent profits. In The Gift of Science, a bold, revisionist account of 300 years of jurisprudence, Roger Berkowitz looks beyond these headlines to explore the historical and philosophical roots of our current legal and ethical crisis.
Moving from the scientific revolution to the nineteenth-century rise of legal codes, Berkowitz tells the story of how lawyers and philosophers invented legal science to preserve law's claim to moral authority. The "gift" of science, however, proved bittersweet. Instead of strengthening the bond between law and justice, the subordination of law to science transformed law from an ethical order into a tool for social and economic ends. Drawing on major figures from the traditions of law, philosophy, and history, The Gift of Science is not only a mesmerizing and original intellectual history of law; it shows how modern law remains imprisoned by a failed scientific metaphysics.
Roger Berkowitz is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights at Bard College.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface Note on Terminology Introduction: Legal Codification, Positive Law, and the Question of Science From Insight to Science: Leibniz’s Scientific Foundation of Justice 1 Beyond Geometry: Leibniz and the Science of Law 2 The Force of Law: Will 3 Leibniz’s Systema Iuris II The Allgemeines Landrecht: From Recht to Gesetz 4 From the Gesetzbuch to the Landrecht: The ALR and the Triumph of Legality 5 The Rule of Law: The Crown Prince Lectures and the Grounding of Legality in Order and Security III From Science to Technique: Friedrich Carl von Savigny, the BGB, and the Self-Overcoming of Legal Science 6 From Reason to History: Savigny’s System and the Rise of Social Legal Science 7 The Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) of 1900: Positive Legal Science and the End of Justice Conclusion Note on Sources Notes Index
What People are Saying About This
Drucilla Cornell
Berkowitz has written a brilliant and original book that reframes both the history and conceptualization of positive law. By showing how positive law has its origins in the scientific revolution he forces philosophers to rethink the very essence of modern law. His historical account of how positive law develops out of Leibniz's philosophy as a scientific legal system based on legitimating rules and procedures is elegantly written and analytically precise. The Gift of Science is a book that bridges the gap between analytic and continental philosophies of law. No one interested in the intersection of law, philosophy, sociology, and history can afford to ignore this book. — Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
Roger Berkowitz presents a provocative intellectual history of the idea of legal science in Germany from Leibnitz to the great codification of German private law. Arguing that law in the modern era has undergone a momentous transformation, he suggestively ties together Leibniz's hitherto almost ignored legal writings, the rise of the notion of positive law grounded in will, the controversy about codification, and the reconceptualization of law as the product of a special kind of science. Berkowitz's account will fascinate both those interested in law's past and those concerned about law's present.
Ernest J. Weinrib
Roger Berkowitz presents a provocative intellectual history of the idea of legal science in Germany from Leibnitz to the great codification of German private law. Arguing that law in the modern era has undergone a momentous transformation, he suggestively ties together Leibniz's hitherto almost ignored legal writings, the rise of the notion of positive law grounded in will, the controversy about codification, and the reconceptualization of law as the product of a special kind of science. Berkowitz's account will fascinate both those interested in law's past and those concerned about law's present. — Ernest J. Weinrib, University of Toronto
Lindsay Farmer
A readable and challenging account of the modern German legal tradition, focusing in particular on the attempts of jurists from Leibniz onwards to establish rational and scientific grounds for understanding and justifying law. — Lindsay Farmer, University of Glasgow School of Law
Anthony Sebok
Berkowitz's analysis of the ultimate failure of the Leibnizian project, and the pitfalls of the codification movement in the 19th Century, is rich with lessons for modern American liberal jurisprudential theory. — Anthony Sebok, Brooklyn Law School
Uday Singh Mehta
This is a remarkably courageous book because it unwaveringly stays with fundamental questions about the nature of justice, without allowing issues of law, fairness, efficiency or legitimacy to serve as adequate substitutes for pursuing such questions. Berkowitz's intellectual courage is supported by a superb intelligence and a wide-ranging erudition. — Uday Singh Mehta, Amherst College
