Reverent Rites of Legal Theory: unity - diversity - interdisciplinarity

For over centuries jurists have tried to find a definition of law, and still they have not succeeded, wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. We have not made a lot of progress since, and while the search for an all-encompassing definition of a phenomenon as dynamic as law is futile, we would do well as legal scholars to reconsider the whatness of law when we embark upon disciplinary cooperations, rather than use the term law somewhat loosely, which is a ritual predominant in (theoretical) interdisciplinary legal studies. The same goes, of course, for the discipline with which law cooperates. The conceptual choices made obviously affect the resulting interdiscipline. An extra complicating factor for interdisciplinary studies is the difference between common law and civil law perspectives on “law”. A short historical overview of the European legal tradition characterized as it is by alternating movements towards unity and diversity in both law and legal theory can help offer insights in the very idea of interdisciplinarity and will serve as an overture to a discussion of what unites and what divides Anglo-American and European interdisciplinary legal studies. Given my own combined context as a judge and a scholar working in the field of Law and Literature, my focus will be humanistic, also on the view that the debate on whether law is one of the social sciences or firmly belongs to the humanities is still with us and because the stand we take here is important for the future of such broader fields as Law and Culture and Law and the Humanities.