Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
IF KNOWLEDGE is power, so, too, are power relations also knowledge
relations, truth relations. While theology has often served as a public
arena for the playing out of disputes about how and where to seek the
truth, in the present day, and particularly in largely secular
multicultural societies, law has become a privileged site in which people
either seek the truth themselves or comment on the truth-seeking efforts
of others. This dimension of law is not always acknowledged. Law students
are told, for example, that law is only interested in particular
truths-who committed this crime, how the liability for this accident
ought to be allocated-and are enjoined not to waste time on the
philosophical or scientific frameworks for truth seeking that characterize
more academic enterprises. But in courts of law, as in murder mysteries,
looking for the local truth about an event usually involves both
participants and spectators in theorizing about general truths, and even
about whether truth can ever be found. Just as mystery writers use the
pursui ... read full excerpt from Law's Dream of a Common Knowledge ebook
