Daniel Goldsworthy (Deakin Law School)- Evaluation and Legal Theory: The Possibility Claim Re-Examined
Location:
Online only
Date/time
Thu 15 May 2025
11:00-13:00
This is a seminar organised by the Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group. The speaker Daniel Goldsworthy, from Deakin Law School, will be presenting his paper on Evaluation and Legal Theory: The Possibility Claim Re-Examined.
Our seminars consist of a 30-minute presentation given by the author, followed by a 60 to 90-minute Q&A. This is not a pre-read event, but the paper will be circulated beforehand through our mailing list. To subscribe, please send an email to edinburgh.legal.theory@gmail.com.
About the speaker
Dan is a doctoral candidate in legal theory at Melbourne Law School, an academic with Deakin Law School, and an Australian Lawyer admitted in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia. His doctoral research focusses on methodology in legal theory and jurisprudence. He teaches in the areas of statutory interpretation, public law, constitutional law, and public international law.
About this event
Is it possible to pick out and select law’s important features, at the outset of theoretical inquiry, without engaging in moral evaluation? Some argue that it is, and that it can (and therefore should) remain descriptive in nature, whereas others argue that it is inescapably a normative enterprise.
Julie Dickson offers the most detailed methodological account arguing that it is possible to remain morally neutral – with an approach she calls indirect evaluation. I label this position her Possibility Claim, which has four bases or indicia.
The Possibility Claim grounds her methodology and its development from what was formerly ‘indirectly evaluative legal theory’ (IELT) to what she now labels ‘indirectly evaluative legal philosophy’ (IELP). The methodological theory which she has developed and refined is often seen as underpinning much of regnant legal positivism. In this work in progress, I critically analyse one of these four indicia – the matters of practical concern indicium – and press whether, in trying to apply this indicium, it can remain morally neutral all the way through.
This event is online only.
Image credit: Freepik