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Jiri Priban, "Doing What Comes Naturally, Or A Walk on the Wild Side?: Remarks on Stanley Fish's Anti-Foundationalist Concept of Law, its Closure and Force", Law and Critique IX/2 (1998), 249-270: 'The article deals with current schools of legal philosophy and theory which are significantly influenced by the post-structural turn in the concept of law. This turn is illustrated by the works of the American literary and legal scholar, Stanley Fish. The text is centred around a difference and arguments between the anti-foundationalist, pragmatic concept of law as worked out by Stanley Fish, and the theoretical-ideological adoption of post-structuralism by some of the most representative members of the Critical Legal Studies Movement. The first part consists of a comparison between the anti-theoretical approach of Stanley Fish and ideological critical and politicising attitudes of the Critical Legal Studies Movement. However, Fish's concept of law goes beyond the limited borders of legal theory and, paradoxically, shows some common features with the general social systems theory of the German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann. The second part of the text therefore analyses relations between Luhmann's concept of autopoiesis and Fish's understanding of law as a closed context of interpretive practices. The third part of the text then concentrates on a mutual inspiration between Stanley Fish and Jacques Derrida in the field of definition of 'the force of law'. In spite of acceptance of many standpoints of Stanley Fish, the author of this article concludes by a critique of law's closure as defined by Stanley Fish and by a rejection of the restrictive function of force in the legal context which dismantles law's heterogeneity and the art of human memory.

 



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