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Two Senses of Law as an Artefact

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posted on 2025-04-07, 08:37 authored by Bartosz Biskup

This paper aims to analyse the claims that law is an artefact. There are two different concepts of the artefact in legal–philosophical literature. In some contexts, the concept of an artefact implies that a law is a social kind rather than something similar to a natural kind. Philosophers use the concepts of essentialism, fallibilism, and externalism to juxtapose law with natural kinds. However, in different contexts, the use of ‘artefact’ seems to presuppose some ontologically robust views from the specific field as the philosophy of technical artefacts. This latter use, however, assumes certain ontological presuppositions concerning the examination of law; specifically, the intention of the author and the purposive character of law. I argue that between the thesis that law is an artefact understood as a social kind or social construct and the thesis that law is similar to technical artefacts, there is a conceptual shift. I claim that this shift is unjustified.

History

Publication Date

2024

Volume

50

Issue

3

Type

Journal Article

Pages

27

AGLC Citation

Bartosz Biskup, 'Two Senses of Law as an Artefact' (2024) 50(3) Monash University Law Review (advance).

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