Whether or not we have ourselves studied the philosophy of law, most of us are familiar with the fact that philosophical debate concerning the nature of law has been around since Ancient Greece. In much the same way, there have been long-running philosophical debates concerning justice, truth, reason and a host of other issues. The debate concerning law is in some respects different, however. For it is not too difficult to see how the nature of justice or truth or reason could give rise to a specifically philosophical debate, while it is far from clear why the nature of law should generate any philosophical puzzlement at all.

In some of his last published works, Neil MacCormick began to refer to his theoretical position as “post-positivist.” In light of the widely perceived limitations of the “positivist” label, this self-identification might seem prudent. Was it anything more? Was MacCormick's position really post-positivist? In this paper, I argue that it was not, but that this need not be viewed as a failing of MacCormick's work, since there is a sense in which modern jurisprudence cannot and need not hope to become generally post-positivist. More specifically, given the institutional context in which legal scholarship is produced, positivism is likely to be an inevitable (if not necessarily dominant) mode of theorizing about law. Yet much informative work remains to be done under the positivist rubric—not just along the lines suggested by MacCormick, but along others as well.

Legal Positivism is dead, isn't it? We are all legal realists now. We believe, by default, that what really matters in law emerges from some judicial process. We sense that the point of norm-production by adjudication is to accomplish something useful or good for either individuals or society at large. Practice trumps theory and policy implementation overrides respect for some scholarly edifice. What we do when we do law is to unreel formula and rhetoric. We engage in these exercises with the aim to have judges rule in favor of our clients. Should we be judges ourselves, we promote causes we deem to be noble and fine. Law is a tool. Skillfully mastered legal knowledge is a prerequisite for using it well.

In the following Article I will develop seven ideal-typical role models for (or caricatures of) legal scholars: the Oracle Scientist, the Prophet, the Law Reformer, the Humble Clerk, the Wise Pragmatist, the Self-Reflective, and the Media Star. Ten features will be used to characterize the ideal for each model: primary audience, ideal function, perverted form, influence on the law, prestige, measure of success, time scale, use of non-legal (moral or social/economic) arguments, precondition of existence, typical countries, and famous lawyers (representing themselves or at least proposing to other legal scholars to follow that specific role model).

One of the main problems which has emerged in recent years in the debates of legal positivism has been a rather defensive twist in its self-understanding (i.e., its self-affirmation in terms of what it is not). Now, whereas such a negative approach does not in itself pose a problem, in the case of legal positivism it has led to a series of rearguard battles against claims stemming, on the one hand, in more general philosophic developments, and, on the other, in doctrinal legal scholarship. The result has been that some have wondered if between those conceptual and institutional demarcations, between the philosophic and the juridical departments, there actually remains anything for positivism to stand for. Is there anything it actually claims? Accordingly, a perceived dilemma of positivism has emerged along the following lines: insofar as legal positivism makes a sound claim, this claim is very weak and, by itself, not very interesting; insofar, however, as positivism tries to make a strong and interesting claim, this claim can be shown to be fundamentally misguided.