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12 Jurisprudence 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/jisprud12 and id is 1 raw text is: JURISPRUDENCE 2021, VOL. 12, NO. 1, 1-16 https://doi.org/10.1080/20403313.2020.1787783 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Disagreement about the kind law Muhammad Ali Khalidi' and Liam Murphyb 'Department of Philosophy, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York City, NY, USA; bSchool of Law and Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York City, NY, USA 1. Introduction Philosophical disagreement about the nature of law seems particularly obdurate. But is it less tractable than other deep-seated disagreements, such as those about morality? And does persistent disagreement about the nature of law suggest that there may be no truth to be found, though that is not so for the case of morality? In this paper, we argue that the dispute between positivists and nonpositivists about the nature of law is different mainly because law is a social kind that depends on our concepts. If we assume that there are such things as 'social kinds', that is natural kinds in the social domain, we can go on to ask about the nature of these kinds.' In particular, in what ways do social kinds depend on human concepts, beliefs, and actions? To better understand the nature of the disagreement between positivists and nonpositivists, this paper will examine the nature of law through the lens of social kinds. We will argue that law is a particular kind of social kind, one whose existence is dependent on our having a concept of it. This claim illuminates the nature and implications of the CONTACT Liam Murphy liam.murphy@nyu.edu 'Social kinds are sometimes contrasted with natural kinds, but we don't intend the 'natural' in 'natural kind' to provide a contrast with the social. In our view, natural kinds are more aptly labelled, 'real kinds', and are not restricted to the domains of the natural sciences. This is in keeping with the original use of 'kinds' in the nineteenth century, by philo- sophers like Mill, Whewell, and Venn, all of whom thought that kinds could be found in the social domain; for further justification of this account of social kinds, see Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Natural Categories and Human Kinds (CUP 2013). © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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