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Reification in Legal Reasoning

  • Reification in Legal Reasoning

    • Legal reasoning is a repressive thought process that restricts understanding of the social world.
    • Institutional symbols (judges, legal schools) create boundaries around rationality legitimacy.
    • Legal rules do not serve dominant class interests directly but rather support a psychology of acceptance of socioeconomic processes.

  • Social Action and Legitimization

    • Actions of social actors within historical contexts aim to self-legitimate their experiences.
    • Legal domination is a form of legitimizing repression shared across society.
    • Legal thought is reified due to its abstraction from lived experiences leading to a false perception of reality.

  • Communication and Reification

    • Reified communication distorts the meaning, resulting in collective unconscious coercion.
    • Children learn distorted ideas through rituals (e.g., pledge of allegiance) without understanding their content.
    • Abstract concepts (e.g., citizenship, justice) become accepted truths, shielding the reified nature of these ideas from critique.

  • Alienation and Legal Function

    • Alienation creates unawareness of personal connectedness and legitimacy in social roles, reinforcing legal frameworks.
    • Law functions as a denial of collective feelings of disconnection and reinforces the perception that society operates under normative law.

  • Legal Thought Process

    • Judges apply abstract legal reasoning by recognizing fact-situations through shared cultural meanings.
    • The judge’s function is influenced by societal norms, which transform subjective legal concepts into objective truths.
    • Legal reasoning involves phases: apprehension, presupposition of norms, and conceptual analysis of facts to reach verdicts.

  • Reification of Legal Concepts

    • Legal outcomes imply a normative structure that appears natural and universal, facilitating societal function.
    • The law translates social interactions into rights and duties among abstract 'parties,' conferring a sense of legitimacy.

  • Conclusion

    • Legal reason serves to mask alienation and provide a sense of social cohesion through abstract constructs.
    • Effective legal narratives restore perceived order and function in society, despite being rooted in a reified reality.
    • The ultimate goal is to create a legal structure that appears just and universally applicable, sustaining the status quo by perpetuating myths about individual agency and social order.