Somehow, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes managed to come to the same conclusion without the benefit of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Jim F.
On Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:59:13 -0700 "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at attbi.com>
writes:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 6:00 PM
> Subject: RE: Why we will need lawyers anyway
>
>
> >
> >
> > Godel assures us that no system of laws can be perfect, so lawyers
> will
> >always be necessary. Wake up.
> >
>
>
>
> That's not what Goedel showed, and his theorem has no relevance to
> law or
> political or legal philosophy or practice. What he showed was that
> arithmetic is incomplete, i.e., that in any formal system powerful
> enough to
> express arithmetic, there is at least one true proposition not
> provable
> within that system. jks
>
>
> ==================================
> lord only knows what sort of decision procedures can be devised to
> adjudicate the conflicting claims of the papers below:
>
>
> < http://www.uchastings.edu/hlj/abstracts/abstr436.html >
>
> On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Law: Legal Indeterminacy and
> the Implications of Metamathematics
> by Mark R. Brown and Andrew C. Greenberg
>
> Recent articles in the Critical Legal Studies literature claim that
> results from mathematical logic show that no system of law can
> be formalized so that every dispute is determinate. Specifically, it
> has been suggested that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and the
> works of Lowenheim and Skolem inform the question whether the law
> compels outcomes of cases. Because those results prove that
> certain formal systems of mathematics are necessarily indeterminate,
> they might suggest that analogous claims are true of the law.
>
> In their Article, Mr. Greenberg and Professor Brown analyze Godel's
> Incompleteness Theorem in an attempt to determine how, if at
> all, these proofs apply to the law. The underlying issue addressed
> by this Article is whether the law can formally direct outcomes,
> given specific facts. The authors demonstrate that for any
> reasonably powerful formalization of the law, a proposition can be
> constructed that cannot be formally resolved. Like mathematics, any
> formally constructed model of the law must prove trivial,
> inconsistent, or incomplete. Legal reasoning cannot be automated,
> and must ultimately turn on human judgment and intuition. The
> ideal of legal formalism is therefore an illusion.
>
>
> < http://www.uchastings.edu/hlj/abstracts/abstr443.html >
>
> Godel and Langdell--A Reply to Brown and Greenberg's Use of
> Mathematics in Legal Theory
> by David R. Dow
>
> In 1931, the German mathematician Kurt Godel proved that formal
> mathematical systems cannot be both complete and consistent. Using
> an intricate technique known as "embedding," Godel was able to use
> the basic tools of mathematical logic to prove their own
> indeterminacy. In recent years, scholars addressing law's
> indeterminacy have begun to discuss the applicability of Godel's
> Incompleteness Theorems, attempting to prove for law what Godel
> proved for mathematics.
>
> In this Essay, Professor Dow challenges the utility of mathematical
> analysis in legal discourse. Focusing on a recent article by
> Mark R. Brown and Andrew C. Greenberg, Professor Dow shows that
> legal and mathematical reasoning are fundamentally dissimilar, and
> argues that law should scavenge only for things that law is like.
> Scavenging from mathematics, and from Godel's work in particular,
> represents a return to the discredited "scientific" approach to
> legal analysis epitomized by Christopher Columbus Langdell.
> Moreover, Professor Dow explains, attempting to prove law's
> indeterminacy through formal devices shows a basic misunderstanding
> of
> the source of law's inability to mechanically resolve disputes. The
> root of law's indeterminacy lies in the incoherence of the very
> concept of "the law." Law comprises distinctive sets of norms,
> entirely discrete normative regimes. The real task of legal theory,
> Professor Dow concludes, is to determine how we should choose among
> these competing regimes.
>
>
>
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