Jurisprudence

Having thought about truth, Benjamin Bestgen now considers lies. See his last jurisprudential primer here. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift lets Captain Gulliver explain to the Houyhnhnms, a race of highly intelligent horses dedicated to reason and truth, that lawyers are: intrinsically c

In the tenth in his series on jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen looks at how the law might handle cognitive enhancements as new drugs are developed and our perceptions change. The movie Limitless deals with a struggling author who is given a drug that vastly increases his cognitive abil

Benjamin Bestgen discusses law in utopian fiction. See his last jurisprudential primer here. Dystopian fiction has enjoyed significant popularity again in recent years: Day of the Oprichnik or Hunger Games followed the footsteps of classics like The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, The Dispossessed, Dar

Benjamin Bestgen considers judges and politics (click here to view his last jurisprudential primer). See also SLN's review of Lord Sumption's book dealing with the same theme. In April 2020, Polish Supreme Court President Malgorzata Gersdorf retired. She noted that she had been unable to stop contes

Benjamin Bestgen looks at why you might breathe a sigh of relief knowing his lordship has had breakfast. See his last jurisprudential primer here. Legal television like My Cousin Vinny, Silk or The Good Wife is sometimes used to exemplify courtroom dos and don’ts – the first one having r

Benjamin Bestgen explores trust and trustworthiness in his latest jurisprudential primer. See his last post here. Literature and movies are full of stories that have, either at their core or as a necessary ingredient, the topic of trust and trustworthiness. Recently, Marriage Story (2019) dealt with

In his latest jurisprudential primer, Benjamin Bestgen explains why there is more to the concept of 'hard work' than meets the eye. See his last post here. The legal profession and many others are notorious for being associated with stressful work, tight deadlines and demanding unsociable, even unhe

Benjamin Bestgen discusses how moral judgements are affected by aesthetic perception in his latest jurispurdential primer. See also parts one, two and three. In March 2020, Singapore’s High Court dismissed a challenge to repeal s.377A, a colonial-era law that penalises homosexual acts between

In the third of his jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen looks at truth. See part two here. Scottish author Irvine Welsh reacted with disbelief when Alex Salmond was acquitted of several sexual offences last month: “For fuck sake. NINE women were lying? Come on.”

In the second of his jurisprudential primers, Benjamin Bestgen invokes Greek wisdom in thinking about the merits of democracy. See part one here. Likening statecraft to captaining a ship goes back to the Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene but was made famous in Plato’s Republic.

In the first in a series of jurisprudential primers for Scottish Legal News, Benjamin Bestgen reflects on philosophical thinking. When I studied philosophy, one of the typical remarks from well-meaning people with little knowledge of the subject were pointers to Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker a