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Teaching Critically within a Modern Legal Genre*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

William E. Conklin
William E. Conklin
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law/Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor
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Abstract

This paper argues that the effort to teach law critically from the external viewpoint reinforces the ideological and social function of a professional law school in a modern state. One should realize that law is a language, a secondary language that conceals suffering as it parasitically assimilates all primary discourses. The professional law school of a modern state aids in the production of such concealment. Examples are offered from different areas of legal discourse as well as from the author's experiences. The suffering arises from the concealment of the languages of embodied subjects, whose harm can only be recognized through the chains of authoritative signifiers that the professor pro-fesses. The secondary legal language either excludes the primary languages or redefines the subject's experience. Further, the legal language is inculcated into the subject's language to the point that the citizen must identify with the secondary legal language or, if not, may be authoritatively en-forced to do so. The second sense of suffering aggravates the first.

Résumé

Cet article expose que l'effort fourni pour enseigner le droit de façon critique d'un point de vue externe renforce la fonction idéologique et sociale des facultés de droit dans un État moderne. Il y a lieu de réaliser que le droit est un langage. Il s'agit d'un langage secondaire qui dissimule la souffrance en assimilant de façon parasitaire les discours primaires. L'école professionnelle de droit de l'État moderne participe pas à la mise en oeuvre d'une telle dissimulation. Tant mes propres expériences que les diverses facettes du discours juridique regorgent d'exemples. La dissimulation des discours de sujets concrets, dont la souffrance ne peut être reconnue qu'à partir des chaînes de signifiants autoritaires que le professeur enseigne, engendre la souffrance. Quant au langage secondaire juridique, soit qu'il exclut les langages primaires ou qu'il redéfinit l'expérience du sujet. De plus, le langage juridique est intégré dans le langage du sujet à un point tel que le citoyen doit s'identifier à ce langage secondaire juridique ou, s'il s'y refuse, il (elle) pourra être obligé de le faire de façon péremptoire. Ce deuxième sentiment de souffrance ne vient qu'aggraver le premier.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Fall/automne 1993 , pp. 33 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1993

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References

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