Sherwin on Chorological Jurisprudence and Liberal Democratic Flourishing @RKSherwin @NYLawSchool

Richard K. Sherwin, New York Law School, has published Chorological Jurisprudence and Liberal Democratic Flourishing as NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 4764287. Here is the abstract.

These days, it is difficult not to be preoccupied with calamity. Profound crises surround us on many fronts: climate change and ecological catastrophe, the dark shadow of viral pandemics, and dire threats to liberal democracy and the rule of law. In dark times, paralysis and despair can pull us further into the dark. To make our way back to the light we need to marshal every cultural, cognitive, affective, and spiritual resource at our disposal. Global challenges call for global responses. But are our resources sufficient? Is our collective moral imagination up to the task of renewing state and global institutions? Do we have the intellectual as well as the moral resources to build societies where governance is for the benefit of the governed, not the governors? Legal theory, doctrine, and practice presuppose basic assumptions about human nature as well as the nature of the social and natural world around us. We can only resolve conflicts within the horizon of our perception and knowledge, which is to say, within a universe of familiar categories and tools for thinking, feeling, and communicating with others. We create everyday tools for thinking and our tools, in turn, create us. Locked into habituated patterns of thought and feeling, we often forget not only that we can know more, but also that we can know differently.

The full text is not available for download from SSRN.