Less Incorrect Ways of Doing Jurisprudence

Abstract

Theorists interested in the question of how to do jurisprudence often have the aspiration of devel-oping a method that is the correct one. The article challenges this aspiration. Focusing on Julie Dickson’s claim that Indirectly Evaluative Legal Theory is the correct method, I show that any method claiming to be the correct one runs into the problem that law is not the kind of thing that a legal theorist could capture independently of her underlying conception of law, and without poten-tially influencing what law is through her own theory. However, this does not spell the end of ju-risprudential methodology. The article proposes that methodologists should shift their focus away from the pursuit of single correct methods and toward studying and weeding out incorrect meth-ods. I outline some of the principles that theorists can use for this purpose and point to promising avenues of research that this shift opens up.