Formal and Substantive Rationality in Law: Legacies of the Axial Age?

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Abstract

This essay makes a case for an “Axial Age” in law, drawing on Karl Jaspers, Max Weber, Raymond Westbrook, and others. I argue that Jaspers’ ecumenical vision of an Axial Age in world history – a transformative age of human history occurring sometime around 500 B.C., one in which the range of possibilities for human self-consciousness was radically changed, and one that caused a veil to stand between us and the ancient civilizations that came before – does fit important pieces of legal evidence, such as the ancient Near Eastern law codes and the Biblical legal texts contained in the Pentateuch. I also suggest that this Axial Age in law matters for us today, both for our understandings of “legal rationality” and for our commitments to constitutional limitations on prerogative powers.

Author

• Laura R. Ford, Bard College