Old and new interpretations of legal naturalism

Abstract

The first part of the article presents the comments related to the concept of naturalism, its interpretation and classification. The next part is devoted to legal naturalism, in particular, the author presents five possible areas of development of legal naturalism, namely, philosophical, psychological, neuroscience, economic and philosophical-dogmatic-legal ones. First of all, the author discusses two most important advantages associated with the naturalistic vision of law. The first one involves creation of new specialized models of naturalization of law that would offer a broader concept of law, as opposed to standard theories. As a result, the law would become open to new research and interpretations. In the era of technological and scientific revolutions, in the era of global civilization, the use of long-standing paradigms in law seems at least out of place. The second advantage involves defining the scope of application of these models, thereby revealing their practical aptitude. In particular, this would lead to a change in the definition of many basic concepts from the legal vocabulary such as “property”, “act”, “will”, “responsibility”, “guilt”, “consciousness”, “common sense” or “error”. As for the potential risks associated with the adoption and application of new models of naturalization of law, the author distinguishes between the following two risks. The first risk concerns changing or modifying existing interpretation standards. The establishment of a “new” naturalistic paradigm would jeopardize, in particular, the “rules of interpretative inertia” generally accepted by lawyers. The second risk, closely related to the preceding one, is the emergence of an eventual state of uncertainty in law, by introducing new alternative naturalistic interpretations.

Keywords:

legal naturalism, development of naturalism, advantages of a naturalistic approach, psychological development of naturalism, neuroscientific development of naturalism, economic development of naturalism, legal-dogmatic development of naturalism