A jog filozófiai elgondolása

Bjarne Melkevik’s book is one of the best comprehensive treatments of legal philosophy currently available in Canada. First of all, the reader will fi nd in the form of a long introduction a book-chapter translated into Hungarian, which is a general description of Melkevik’s jurisprudential views, provided by Mate Paksy. The chosen chapter organizes the refl exions on legal philosophy into three interrelated questions. Melkevik’s fi rst, thought-provoking question is as follows: why do we need legal philosophy? He views legal philosophy not as foundational legal scholarship, but mainly as an elucidation of public, refl exive argumentation on law which isn’t at 22 Pr o Fu tu ro 2 01 8/ 1 Jogés államtudomány odds either with an empirical methodology. The second question concerns whether studying legal philosophy is useful for lawyers. Here Melkevik endorses again a post-positivist position according to which both law and legal philosophy are essentially practical discourses. Though the third part of the paper is heavy with disciplinary boundary-drawing, which emerges from questioning the place of legal scholarship vis-à-vis other, more empirical branches of social sciences such as history or anthropology, Melkevik’s refl exions here are still inspired by a sort of Neo-Kantian legal philosophy and Habermas’ communicative ethics.