Time in Law's Domain |
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| Authors: | Gerald J. Postema |
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| Affiliation: | Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB# 3125, Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill NC 27599, USAThis essay is a revision of the Petrazycki Lecture (the title of which was “Time in Law's Empire”) presented to the Law Faculty of the University of Warsaw, 21 May 2015. I also gave a version of this paper later in that year as keynote to Australian Society of Legal Philosophy. I am grateful to Professors Tomasz Stawecki, Krzysztof R?czka, and Tomasz Giaro for the honor of presenting this lecture and for their hospitality during my visit in Warsaw. I am also grateful for the opportunity to share my ideas with my colleagues in Australia and New Zealand, and especially to Kevin Walton, Michael Sevel, and their colleagues for the invitation and their warm engagement with this and other work of mine. |
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| Abstract: | Law bends the past of a community's common life towards its future. 1 Precedent is one of law's favored tools for doing the bending, and legal systems that assign precedent a starring role seem especially mindful of time. Yet, mindfulness of time goes far deeper into law's DNA. It is not limited to the doctrine of precedent or unique to common‐law jurisdictions. Recognizing that time is an elemental dimension of human experience and basic ordering principle of practical agency, law utilizes and orders time. Temporality is essential to law's distinctive mode of governance and guidance. |
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