Does “The Law” Exist?
Legal Moderns Send the Law Packing
The title of this article will seem odd to most readers, for they will say that, of course, laws exist; we are surrounded by them; indeed, we cannot avoid them. As a practicing lawyer, I deal with laws all the time. They are made by persons acting in various official capacities, for example, by legislators or judges. They are sometimes referred to as the “positive law.” If I have forgotten the law that applies to a particular situation, I can look it up. I will find it written down somewhere in black and white, as a city ordinance, for example, or a state or federal regulation or statute, or in an individual case decided by a judge.
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Thomas E. Lordan is an independent scholar and practicing lawyer (currently with Arizona Voice for Crime Victims) living in Phoenix with his wife, Kimberly. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from Notre Dame and an M.A. in Politics from Catholic University, where he is currently working on his Ph.D. He taught at Thomas More College and Benedictine University and has presented papers at each Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association since 2014.
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