Staking the Claim/Walking the Field

Abstract

When jurisprudence became a science of relations in law in its own right in the nineteenth century, the historical link between philosophy and law was severed.¹ It is now nearly thirty-five years since Cairns appraised this rift between philosophy and law. In the interim new links have been forged. The most conspicuous philosophical-legal tie is, perhaps, in the area of rights. A less visible relation between law and philosophy can be seen through Peirce’s pragmatic thoughts. The name for this fresh approach to the study of law and other social systems is semiotics. A special area of this new field of inquiry is legal semiotics with its ramified inquiry into economics and politics.