See also The Leffian Quagmire – and Others

What a curious mixture of ideologies drives the conversation at law schools.  When I speak about natural law in these venues, I find that the same questioner will often be a pragmatist at one moment, a utilitarian the next, then a relativist, then a subjectivist, then an evolutionist, then a conventionalist.

Listening to this sort of thing is like being dipped into philosophy stew that has been sitting on the counter too long.  It goes something like this.

Truth is whatever works and so the only truth is survival and adaptation and so the end justifies the means.

There aren’t any universal moral truths accessible to all persons and so law should not legislate morality and so everyone must obey the new morality.

What’s right and wrong are different everywhere and so what’s right and wrong depend on what one wants and so the law is whatever judges say it is.

Law students exposed to this kind of talk from their professors respond in various ways.  Some don’t notice a problem.  Some are confused.  Some want to grapple, but find it hard to get a hold on all that slipperiness.

And some begin talking the same way.