Exploring Legal Philosophical and Criminological Knowledge Production Through H. L. A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller

Abstract

Criminology and legal philosophy still have much to gain from the exchange of ideas. However, attention must be paid to how this exchange is being made and what is being transferred. This project attempts to examine a currently unacknowledged exchange between the disciplines; that of an historicist, logos-centric method of knowledge production. Specifically, using a refashioned dialectic method, the debate between H.L.A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller will be compared and contrasted with Robert Agnew’s representation of criminology. This will give some clarity to the different ways by which the disciplines (re)produce knowledge. Importantly, the process of (re)production detailed here is characterized by a (dis)unity between how the disciplines rhetorically justify their methodology and the actual analyses being produced. To give this process colour, it will be examined in relation to criminology’s crisis. Ultimately, the analysis presented here raises doubts about the truthfulness of legal philosophical and criminological knowledge produced in this way.