{"title":"The Concepts of Law","authors":"Thomas B. Ginsburg, N. Stephanopoulos","doi":"10.4324/9781315573298","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Concepts are the building blocks of legal doctrine. All legal rules and standards, in fact, are formed by combining concepts in different ways. But despite their centrality, legal concepts are not well understood. There is no agreement as to what makes a legal concept useful or ineffective—worth keeping or in need of revision. Social scientists, however, have developed a set of criteria for successful concepts. Of these, the most important is measurability: the ability, at least in principle, to assess a concept with data. In this Essay, we apply the social scientific criteria to a number of concepts and conceptual relationships in American constitutional law. We show that this field includes both poor and effective concepts and conceptual links. We also explain how the examples of poor concepts could be improved.","PeriodicalId":51436,"journal":{"name":"University of Chicago Law Review","volume":"15 1","pages":"147"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2017-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"14","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"University of Chicago Law Review","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315573298","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 14
Abstract
Concepts are the building blocks of legal doctrine. All legal rules and standards, in fact, are formed by combining concepts in different ways. But despite their centrality, legal concepts are not well understood. There is no agreement as to what makes a legal concept useful or ineffective—worth keeping or in need of revision. Social scientists, however, have developed a set of criteria for successful concepts. Of these, the most important is measurability: the ability, at least in principle, to assess a concept with data. In this Essay, we apply the social scientific criteria to a number of concepts and conceptual relationships in American constitutional law. We show that this field includes both poor and effective concepts and conceptual links. We also explain how the examples of poor concepts could be improved.
期刊介绍：
The University of Chicago Law Review is a quarterly journal of legal scholarship. Often cited in Supreme Court and other court opinions, as well as in other scholarly works, it is among the most influential journals in the field. Students have full responsibility for editing and publishing the Law Review; they also contribute original scholarship of their own. The Law Review"s editorial board selects all pieces for publication and, with the assistance of staff members, performs substantive and technical edits on each of these pieces prior to publication.
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