The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition »

Roger Berkowitz is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights at Bard College.

The front pages of our newspapers and the lead stories on the evening news bear witness to the divorce of law from justice. The rich and famous get away with murder; Fortune 500 corporations operate sweatshops with impunity; blue-chip energy companies that spoil the environment and sicken communities face mere fines that don't dent profits. In The Gift of Science, a bold, revisionist account of 300 years of jurisprudence, Roger Berkowitz looks beyond these headlines to explore the historical and philosophical roots of our current legal and ethical crisis.

Moving from the scientific revolution to the nineteenth-century rise of legal codes, Berkowitz tells the story of how lawyers and philosophers invented legal science to preserve law's claim to moral authority. The "gift" of science, however, proved bittersweet. Instead of strengthening the bond between law and justice, the subordination of law to science transformed law from an ethical order into a tool for social and economic ends. Drawing on major figures from the traditions of law, philosophy, and history, The Gift of Science is not only a mesmerizing and original intellectual history of law; it shows how modern law remains imprisoned by a failed scientific metaphysics.

Eike-Henner W. Kluge - Philosophy in Review

What Berkowitz has done is to contribute to a fuller appreciation of Leibniz' astounding genius by illuminating this other unknown area of his endeavour: the philosophy of law...I recommend it highly.

Preface

Note on Terminology

Introduction. Legal Codification, Positive Law, and the Question of Science

Part I: From Insight to Science: Leibniz's Scientific Foundation of Justice

Introduction

1. Beyond Geometry: Leibniz and the Science of Law

2. The Force of Law: Will

3. Leibniz's "Systema Iuris"

Conclusion

Part II: The Allgemeine Landrecht: From Recht to Gesetz

Introduction

4. From the Gesetzbuch to the Landrecht: The ALR and the Triumph of Legality

5. The Rule of Law: The Crown Prince Lectures and the Grounding of Legality in Order and Security