Makela on Whether Law Is an Academic Discipline

Finn Makela, Université de Sherbooke, Faculty of Law, has published Is Law an Academic Discipline? at 50(3) R.J.T.U.M. 422 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This article engages with the existing literature on the role of legal research in the University by framing the question as whether law is an academic discipline. I answer in the affirmative but my defense of this position is based on a sociological rather than an ontological conception of disciplinarity. Law is an academic discipline not by virtue of its relationship to a specific object or methodology, but by virtue of the institutional recognition of its legitimacy to produce a scholarly discourse. The argument relies on the distinction between points of view internal and external both to law and to disciplines.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.