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Besprechungsessay. An ethology of judgment?

  • Alain Pottage
Published/Copyright: March 12, 2016
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Summary

Bruno Latour’s La fabrique du droit offers an ethological account of law as a specific regime of véridiction (truth-enunciation). Although Latour focuses on France’s Conseil d’Etat, which is by any standard a quite peculiar institution, his intensive exploration of the practices, routines and dispositions which condition the making of legal judgment in that setting looks beyond the particular institution to the broader dimension of law’s implication in society. More specifically, the Conseil d’Etat serves as a foil for a comparison between the court and the laboratory as a site of scientific véridiction. This article reflects on some aspects of this comparative ethology, focusing, first, on the question whether law as a technologically impoverished set of practices might indeed be illuminated by a comparison with the technologically-mediated practices that animate the laboratory, and, second, on the possibility of productive engagement between Latour’s ethological approach and alternative ways of illuminating law’s native paradoxes.

Online erschienen: 2016-3-12
Erschienen im Druck: 2004-11-1

© 2004 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart

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