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Exploring legal tradition: psychoanalytical theory and Roman law in modern continental jurisprudence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Neil Duxbury
Neil Duxbury*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

The idea that psychoanalysis might be of use in the study oflaw and legal activity is by no means anything new. At the beginning of this century, the Russo-Polish jurist Leon Petrazycki proposed a theory of legal psychology, arguing that law, as an intuitively intelligible component of the human mental process, is in essence constituted by individual feelings of moral obligation and responsibility. Around the same time, psychoanalytical theory was beginning to make a slight impact on American and European jurisprudential thinking. This impact was to become all the more significant when, in the 1930s, Thurman Arnold and Jerome Frank presented arguments about the nature oflegal reasoning, and the roles of both academic lawyers and judges, which were very clearly founded upon broad interpretations of psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. In the continental tradition, Hans Kelsen, though in his early work drawing a distinction ‘between pure legal theory and psychological-sociological speculation,’ nevertheless attempted on occasion to conceive of the sovereignty of the state in Freudian psychoanalytic terms

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 84 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1989

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References

Footnotes

1. See Law and Morality: Leon Petrazicki (Eng. tr H. W. Babb. Twentieth Century Legal Philosophy Series, vol VII, Cambridge (Mass), 1955).

2. See, for example, Theodore Schroeder, ‘The Psychologic Study of Judicial Opinions’ (1918) 6 Calif L Rev 8g113. For Schroeder, the ‘psychoanalytic method’ constituted a distinctly ‘new theory’ which could ‘be applied to re-shaping our understanding of juridical action’ (pp 92–93).

3. Thurman W Arnold, The Symbols of Government (New Haven, 1935); ‘Apologia for Jurisprudence’ (1935) 44 Yale LJ 729–53.

4. Jerome Frank, Law and the Modern Mind (New York, 1930);‘Are Judges Human?’ (1931) 8 v Penn L Rev 17–53, 233–67;Courts on Trial: Myth and Reality in American Justice (Princeton, New Jersey, 1949). More recently, the realist approaches of Arnold and Frank have been partially re-invoked by Antoine Garapon,L'âne portant des religues: Essai sur le rituel judiciaire (Paris, 1985).

5. In the context Of US jurisprudence, see also John Batt, ‘Notes From the Penal Colony: A Jurisprudence Beyond Good and Evil’ (1965) 50 Iowa L Rev 999–1031 at 1023–25.

6. Hans Kelsen, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre, entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatze (2nd edn, Tübingen, 1923), p ix.

7. Hans Kelsen, ‘The Conception of State and Social Psychology with Special Reference to Freud's Group Theory’ (1924) 5 International Journal of Psycho-analysis 1–38; ‘God and the State’ in Hans Kelsen, Essays in Legal and Moral Philosophy (Eng tr P. Heath, ed O. Weinberger, Dordrecht, 1973), pp 61–82; see also Pure Theory of Law (2nd edn, Eng tr M. Knight, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp 196–97. For a general commentary, see Antonio A. Martino, ‘Freud, Kelsen et I'unité de I'état’ (1985) 14 Reveue interdisciplinaire d'études juridiques 119–146.

8. Albert A. Ehrenzweig, ‘Psychoanalyse im Recht’ (1952) 74 Juristische Blätter 262–65; ‘Psychoanalytical Jurisprudence: A Common Language for Babylon’ (1965) 65 Col L Rev 1331–1360; Psychoanalytic Jurisprudence: On Ethics, Aesthetics, and ‘Law’ - On Crime, Tort and Procedure (Leiden, 1971).

9. See Ehrenzweig, ‘Psychoanalytic Jurisprudence’, supra n 8, pp 167–8.

10. For example, Frank Rotter, ‘Rechtssoziologie und Psychoanalyse: Neun Thesen in rechtspolitischer Absicht’ (1973) 59 Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 535–50.

11. For excellent introductions, see Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmondsworth, 1974); Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London, 1985).

12. On the Anglo-American tradition in psychoanalysis, see Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object: Pychoanabsis of the Unthought Known (London, 1987).

13. Pierre Legendre, L'amour du censeur: Essai sur l'ordre dogmatique (Pans, 1974), pp 13–32. In the footnotes, this text is henceforth abbreviated to L'amour.

14. For Legendre on Lacan, cf Pierre Legendre, ‘Administrer la psychanalyse: Notes sur la dissolution de I'école freudienne de Pans’ (1981) 11 Pouvoirs 205–18.

15. Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (Eng tr A. Sheridan, London, 1977).

16. For an exploration of this theme in relation to Lacan's psychoanalysis, see François Roustang, Lacan: De l'équivoque à l'impasse (Paris, 1986).

17. Lacan, supra n 15, p 215 et seq.

18. Lacan, supra n 15, p 217.

19. Lacan, supra n 15, p215. See also Moustafa Safouan, ‘Is the Oedipus Complex Universal?’ (1981) 5–6 m/f 83–90.

20. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (ed J.-A. Miller, Eng tr A. Sheridan, Harmondsworth, 1979), p 282.

21. Lacan, supra n 15, p 218.

22. See Jacqueline Rose, ‘Introduction-II’ in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (eds), Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne (Eng tr J. Rose, London, 1982), pp 38–40; also Pierre Legendre, Le dossier occidental de la parenté (Paris, 1988), pp 11–12.

23. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,L'Anti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris, 1972); Eng tr Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane (London, 1984). For an excellent introduction to Deleuze and Guattari's work, see Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy through the Looking-Glass: Language, nonsense, desire (London, 1985), pp 160–97.

24. Deleuze and Guattari, supra n 23, p 247 (Eng tr p 209).

25. Deleuze and Guattari, supra n 23, p 261 (Eng tr pp 221–22 slightly modified).

26. The question is comparable to that which some interpreters have raised with regard to Kelsen's Grundnorm: viz, whence derives the ultimate, constitution-founding authority in which vests the basic norm? Most significantly in this context, see Iain Stewart, ‘The Basic Norm as Fiction’ (1980) n.s. 25 Juridical Review 199–224.

27. Deleuze and Guattari, supra n 23, p 245 (Eng tr p 207 slightly modified).

28. Legendre fails to take into account the existence of customary law (mos maiorum) in Rome before the XII Tables, on which see William E. Brynteson, ‘Roman Law and New Law: The Development of a Legal Idea’ (1956) 12 Revue internationale des droits de l'Antiquité 203–223; Alan Watson, The Evolution of Law (Oxford, 1985), pp 43–65; Sources of Law, Legal Change, and Ambiguity (Edinburgh, 1984), pp 22–24. Legendre's jurisprudence, we might say, is exclusively a jurisprudence of the code: Western legal tradition, for him, begins with the XII Tables.

29. Pontifices are sometimes called pontifices minores in Roman law textbooks in order to distinguish them, as ordinary members of the College, from the head of the College, the pontifex maximus. According to tradition, the pontifical monopoly of legal knowledge was eventually broken around 305 BC with the publication of the ius Flavianum and the resulting increase in the powers of honestiore lay jurists, who thenceforth came to assume the position of official legal authority. See J. A. C. Thomas, Textbook of Roman Law (Amsterdam, 1976), p 41; also Cicero, On the Orator, 40, 183 (in Cicero, On the Good Life Eng tr M. Grant, Harmondsworth, 1971, pp 300–301). It should be noted that Legendre simply treats the rise of the lay jurists as a continuation of the pontifical tradition.

30. See Peter Garnsey, ‘Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire’ (1968) 41 Past and Present 3–24 at 13 et seq. We should mention (since, as we shall see, Legendre does not) that the pontifices were basically men of affairs for whom their priesthood was but another honour. In this way their position contrasts distinctly with that of the ‘holy man’ who was to evolve as a figure in the later stages of the Roman Empire and to endure throughout the Byzantine period. See Peter Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’ (1971) 61 Journal of Roman Studis 80–101.

31. See Frederick P. Walton, Historical Introduction to the Roman Law (4th edn, Edinburgh, 1920), p 264. It should be noted that ‘with the Romans, as with all peoples, law and religion were not originally differentiated, and there were many spheres, even after the XII Tables, and in later times, where the ius sacrum, the religious law strictly so called, touched the ordinary civil law.’ H. F. Jolowicz and Barry Nicholas, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law (3rd edn, Cambridge, 1972), p 89; see also Fernand de Visscher, Études de droit Romain public et privée (Milan, 1966), pp 192–93 where this point is developed specifically in relation to the legal role of the pontifices. Certainly Legendre, in his discussion of Roman law - and especially in his discussion of the idea of pontifical authority - pays little attention to the distinctions between the civil and sacral dimensions.

32. A. Arthur Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanism of Development (The Hague, 1978), p 160.

33. Schiller, supra n 32, p 161. Yet despite the status of the college of pontifics as the highest legal authority in the early Roman Republic, their role was essentially advisorial. By no means are they strictly comparable to judges or advocates in any modern sense. See Fritz Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford, 1946), p 21.

34. Cf Legendre, L'amour, p 29, p 73 n 1, pp 121, 162.

35. On the origins of the law school at Bologna, see Hermann Kantorowicz and Beryl Smalley, ‘An English Theologian's View of Roman Law: Pepo, Irnerius, Ralph Niger’ (1943) 2 Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 237–52. Note also A. Allaria, ‘English Scholars at Bologna during the Middle Ages’ (1893) 112 Dublin Review 66–63 at 69: ‘The Bologna University had two nationes, one comprising the scholars of eighteen different countries upon this side of the Alps, and among them England; to the other belonged the students hailing from seventeen different parts of Italy.’

36. John P. Dawson, The Oracles of the Law (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1968), p 124.

37. Paul Vinogradoff, Roman Low in Medieval Europe (2nd edn, Oxford, 1929), p 56. Further on the scholastic method of the glossators, see Hermann Kantorowicz, ‘The Quaestiones Disputatae of the Glossators’ (1939) 16 Revue d'histoire du droit 1–67; Pierre Legendre, ‘Recherches sur les commentaires pre-accursiens’ (1965) 33 Revue d'histoire du droit 353–429; Eleanor Rathbone, ‘Roman Law in the Anglo-Norman Realm’ (1967) 11 Studia Gratiana 255–71 at 262–3; Peter Stein, Regulae luris: From Juristic Rules to Legal Maxims (Edinburgh, 1966), p 128 et seg.; G. Chevrier, ‘Sur I'art de l'argumentation chez quelques Romanistes médiévaux au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle’ (1966) 11 Archives de Philosophic du Droit 115–48; Vito La Mantia, ‘Su l'imitazione Bizantina, negli scritti del Glossatori’ (1889) 8 Revista Italiana per le Scienze Giuridiche 3-42.

38. Vinogradoff, supra n 37, p 57.

39. Harold J. Berman, ‘The Origins of Western Legal Science’ (1977) 90 Harv L Rev 894–943 at 940. For an interesting appraisal of the modern significance of the idea of legal science in the Romano-Germanic tradition, see Niklas Luhmann, ‘The Legal Profession: Comments on the Situation in the Federal Republic of Germany’ (1975) n.s. 20 Juridical Review 11632 at 128–30.

40. On the role of the doctors generally in the medieval European universities, see Dawson, supra n 36, pp 141–45.

41. Berman, supra n 39, p 941. In a sense, the exegetical and scriptural practices of the medieval scholars can be undersstood in terms of what Lévi-Strauss calls bricolage. The bricoleur, in practice, is a person who produces novel contraptions through the synthesis of old and disparate phenomena. The content of the stock of devices and material that the bricoleur has on hand is effectively ‘the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions.’ Claude Lévi-Strauss,The Savage Mind (London, 1966), p 17; See also Tim Ingold, Evolution and Social Lift (Cambridge, 1986), pp 199–202.

42. Pierre Legendre, Jouir du pouvoir: Traitéé de la bureaucratie patriote (Paris, 1976), p 188; see further Jean-Jacques Gleizal, ‘A propos de Pierre Legendre, ou “Le droit administratif éclate”’ (1978) 2 Procés 151–66.

43. Berman, supra n 39, p 937.

44. Legendre, L amour, p 102; see also Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Eng tr B. Massumi, Manchester, 1986), p 188.

45. Legendre, supra n 42, p 188.

46. Jacques Lenoble and François Ost, ‘Founding Myths in Legal Rationality’ (1986) 49 Mod L Rev 530–44 at 537.

47. Legendre, Supra n 42, p 91.

48. Legendre, L'amour, p 98.

49. Legendre, L'amour, p 5; see also his ‘Les maîtres de la loi; Étude sur la fonction dogmatique en régime industriel’ (1983) 3 Annales: économies, sociétiés, civilisations 507–35; Jacques Lenoble and François Ost, ‘Le côté droit des choses: Entretien avec Pierre Legendre’ (1979) 2 Revue interdisciplinaire d'etudes jurisdiques 89-118 at 93; Jacques Commaille, ‘Esquise d'analyse des rapports entre droit et sociologie: Les sociologies juridiques’ (1982) 8Revue interdisciplinary d'études juridiques 9-32 at 19, 25.

50 Jean-François Catalan, , ‘Qui te donne le droit?… Droit et censure en psychanalyse’ (1984) 9 Philosophic 61–85 at 74.Google Scholar

51. Legendre, L'umour, p 35.

52. Legendre, L'amour, p 28.

53. Legendre, L'amour, p 23.

54. Legendre, L'amour, p 24. On the theme of apologetics in jurisprudence, see Duncan Kennedy, ‘The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries’ (1979) 28 Buffalo L Rev 205–382 at 210.

55. Legendre, L'umour, p 36.

56. Legendre, L'umour, p 51; see also Pierre Legendre, Histoire de l'administration, de 1750 à nos jours (Pans, 1968), pp 467–68; Jean-Louis Schefer, ‘Le droit et toute sa rigueur: Entretien avec Pierre Legendre’ (1977) 26 Communications 3–14.

57. Legendre, L'amour, p 22.

58. ‘The unifying principles which are behind all of the various activities of admittedly legal institutions are the concern Of Jurisprudence. Its task is to prove that such principles exist, and to define them in general terms sufficiently broad so that all the little contradictory ideals appearing in the unending procession of particular cases will appear to be part of one great set of ideals.’ Arnold, The Symbols of Government, supra n 3, pp 49–50, Arnold might himself be viewed as a critical legal scholar avant la lettre: see Gary Peller, ‘The Metaphysics of American Law’ (1985) 73 Calif L Rev 1151–1290. Though it might equally be argued that, in their basic approaches to legal dogmatism, both Legendre and Arnold are prefigured by Bentham's castigation of ‘censorial jurisprudence’. See Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York, Hafner edn, 1948), p 324; also N. E. Simmonds, The Decline of Juridical Reason: Doctrine and Theory in the Legal Order (Manchester, 19840, pp 74–76.

59. Peter Goodrich, ‘Traditions of Interpretation and the Status of the Legal Text’ (1986) 6 Legal Studies 53–69 at 53. See also A. S. Diamond, The Evolution of Law and Order (London, 1951), p 269 et seq.

60 François Ost, , ‘Le code et le dictionnaire: Acceptabilité linguistique et validite juridique’ (1986) 18 Sociologic et sociétés 59–75 at 72.Google Scholar

61. Csaba Varga, ‘Utopias of Rationality in the Development of the Idea of Codificaiton’ (1978) 55 Revista internazionale di filosofia del diritto 21–38 at 35; see also his ‘Types of Codification in Codificational Development’ (1977) 19 Acta Juridica 31–54 at 34 et seq.

62 Goodrich, Peter, ‘Historical Aspects of Legal Interpretation’ (1986) 61 Indiana LJ 331–354 at 342.Google Scholar

63. Legendre, supra n 42, p 62.

64. Julia Kristeva, Sèméiotiké. Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris, 1969), p 24.

65. Legendre, L'umour, p 89. For the idea of ‘the surplus-value of the code’ in modem French social philosophy, see Deleuze and Guattari, supra n 23, p 268 et seg. (Eng trp 228 et seg); Jean Baudrillard, For v Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (Eng tr C. Levin, St. Louis, Mo., 1981), p1 19.

66. Legendre, L'umour, p 76.

67 See Mha, M., ‘Significance, Method and System of Roman Law’ (1969) 11 Acta Juridica 135–152 Google Scholar at 143.

68 Otto Kahn-Freund, , ‘Reflections on Legal Education’ (1966) 29 Mod L Rev 121–136 at 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. Kahn-Freund, supra n 68, p 125.

70 Claude Lévi-Strauss, , ‘Overture to Le cru et le cuit’ (1966) 36 Yule French Studies 41–65 at 64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Legendre, L'umour, p 225.

72. Jacques Lenoble and François Ost, Droit, myth et raison. Essai sur la dérive mytho-logique de la rationalité Juridique (Brussels, 1980), p 223.

73. Cf Pierre Legendre, L'inestimable objet de la transmission (Pans, 1985), pp 241–45; also, Lenoble and Ost, supra n 72, p 223.

74. Cf Legendre, L'amour, pp 128–30; Le dossier occidental de la parenté, supra n22, pp 11–12; see also his comments in Thomas Ferenczi, ‘Comment I'homme devient homme (entretien avec Pierre Legendre)’ Le Mode, 6 May 1988, pp 17, 23.

75. For a recent argument along these lines, see Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (London, 1987), pp 147–67.

76. See, in particular, Luce Irigaray, ‘Mistre de la psychanalyse: De quelques considtrations trop actuelles’ (1977) 30 Critique 879–903; ‘Women's Exile’ (1978) 2 Ideology and Consciousness 62–76 at 69; also, Carolyn Burke, ‘Irigaray Through the Looking Glass’ (1981) 7 Feminist Studies 288–306 at 291–2.

77. For an indicator, see Legendre's comments in Ferenczi, supra n 74.

78. On which see Hermann Kantorowicz, ‘A Medieval Grammarian on the Sources of the Law’ (1957) 15 Tydsschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedmis 25–47 at 37 et seq.

79. See Watson, Sources of Law, supra n 28, pp 25–75.

80. Kahn-Freund, supra n 68, p 126.

81. F. W. Maitland, The Forms of Action at Common Law: A Course of Lectures (1909; Cambridge, 1936), p 9.

82. See Legendre, L'inestimable object de la transmission, supra n 73, p 237: ‘It is a matter of understanding that that which is articulated within the institutional universe presupposes, and accordingly of conceiving of the necessity of a fundamental presupposition at the level of the legal system, in the sense that the mythological Reference acquires value as an axiom with the power to organise and render efficient genealogical normativity. This is what is at stake.’