Abstract
Legal internalism refers to the internal point of view that professional
participants in a legal practice develop toward it. It represents a
behavioral phenomenon wherein such participants treat the domain of law
(or a subset of it) as normative, epistemologically self-contained, and
logically coherent on its own terms regardless of whether the law
actually embodies those characteristics. Thus understood, legal
internalism remains an important characteristic of all modern legal
systems. In this Review, we examine three recent interdisciplinary
histories of copyright law to showcase the working of legal internalism.
We argue that while their interdisciplinary emphasis adds to the
conversation about copyright, it also overlooks the centrality of legal
internalism in the evolution of copyright, a domain that has always been
understood as a creation of the law. The Review unpacks the core tenets
of legal internalism, examines how it operates as an important variable
of legal change, contrasts it with the idea of legal consciousness, and
shows how legal internalism directs and regulates the entry of nonlegal
considerations into different areas of law.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-2 |
Number of pages | 2 |
Journal | European Review of History/Revue Europeene d'Histoire |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 25 Sept 2020 |