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.