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15 Wash. U. Jurisprudence Rev. 29 (2022-2023)
Does Law 'Exist'? Eliminativism in Legal Philosophy

handle is hein.journals/wujurisre15 and id is 35 raw text is: DOES LAW 'EXIST'? ELIMINATIVISM IN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY HILLARY NYE* ABSTRACT What is law? This foundational question in legal philosophy has been understood in a variety of ways. Most recently, it has begun to be interpreted as a question about the nature of law, answerable via conceptual analysis. I will argue here that that approach is a mistake. It leads to an impasse in our debates. We cannot resolve this question because the method adopted is unresponsive to experience. Intuitions are made primary, and participants in the debate are unable to sway one another via counterexamples, because any putative counterexample can simply be reclassified, such that it does not present an objection to the view. In light of these methodological problems, I argue in favour of what has come to be known as 'eliminativism' about law. We should abandon any talk of the nature of law and instead adopt conceptual pluralism in the pursuit of a range of different questions. I respond to a number of objections to the eliminativist approach, arguing that it is a viable position. Hillary Nye, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta; J.S.D., New York University School of Law, 2016; LL.M., New York University School of Law, 2011; B.A, The University of Queensland, Australia, 2009; LL.B., The The University of Queensland, Australia, 2008. I would like to thank David Dyzenhaus, Lewis Kornhauser, Liam Murphy, and Jeremy Waldron for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, and for many valuable conversations about eliminativism over the years. I also thank Tom Adams, Amin Ebrahimi Afrouzi, Raff Donelson, Scott Hershovitz, Brian Leiter, Rocio Lorca Ferreccio, Grace Nye, Maggie O'Brien, Danny Priel, Emmanuel Voyiakis, Emily Kidd White, and Moran Yahav for helpful discussion at various points. Annalise Acorn, Sina Akbari, and Jan Mihal also provided valuable written comments. I presented a different paper about eliminativism at the University of Richmond Philosophy department and some of the comments there influenced my thinking in this paper as well-my thanks to David Lefkowitz for the invitation and his comments on that occasion, and to the other participants at that workshop. I would like to thank the audiences at The University of Alberta Faculty of Law, and The Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in Brazil, for hosting me for the UFMG Seminar Series in Law and Philosophy, and Ronaldo Porto Macedo Jr. for acting as my commentator at that workshop, as well as Thomas Bustamante for inviting me, and for his comments. Thanks finally to the editors at the Washington University Jurisprudence Review for their careful work. I have been thinking about these ideas for many years, and have discussed them with countless people, and so my thanks are due to all of them, and my apologies to those I cannot thank by name.