Legal Theory Lexicon: The Law Is A Seamless Web

F.W. Maitland, the famous legal historian wrote, "Such is the unity of all history that any one who endeavors to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web."  (A Prologue to a History of English Law, 14 L. Qtrly Rev. 13 (1898))  Maitland didn't actually say that the "law is a seamless web," but he is usually given credit for the idea that the law forms some kind of "organic unity" or is characterized by strong interconnections.  The idea that law is seamless web is ambiguous--the aphorism expresses different ideas on different occasions.  This post in the Legal Theory Lexicon series will explicate the seamless web metaphor and its several implications for legal theory.

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Contractarianism, Contractualism, and the Social Contract

Some of the key conceptual tools deployed by legal theorists are likely to be familiar to most law students from their undergraduate education.  One of these is the notion of the "social contract"--familiar from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.  But unless you were an undergraduate philosophy major or have some graduate work in philosophy, you may not be as familiar with some of the ideas that have grown out of the social-contract tradition.

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Shin on Unconscious Discrimination

A steadily mounting body of social science research suggests that ascertaining a person's conscious motives for an action may not always provide a complete explanation of why he did it. The phenomenon of unconscious bias presents a worrisome impediment to the achievement of fair equality in the workplace. There have been numerous deeply insightful articles discussing various aspects of this problem and canvassing its implications for antidiscrimination law.

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Advaita Vedanta - Adi Sankara's views

Adi Sankara's treatises on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras are his principal and almost undeniably his own works. Although he mostly adhered to traditional means of commenting on the Brahma Sutra, there are a number of original ideas and arguments. He taught that it was only through knowledge and wisdom of nonduality that one could be enlightened.

Sankara's opponents accused him of teaching Buddhism in the garb of Hinduism, because his non-dualistic ideals were a bit radical to contemporary Hindu philosophy. However, it may be noted that while the Later Buddhists arrived at a changeless, deathless, absolute truth after their insightful understanding of the unreality of samsara, historically Vedantins never liked this idea. Although Advaita also proposes the theory of Maya, explaining the universe as a "trick of a magician", Sankara and his followers see this as a consequence of their basic premise that Brahman is real. Their idea of Maya emerges from their belief in the reality of Brahman, rather than the other way around.

Sankara was a peripatetic orthodox Hindu monk who traveled the length and breadth of India. The more enthusiastic followers of the Advaita tradition claim that he was chiefly responsible for "driving the Buddhists away". Historically the decline of Buddhism in India is known to have taken place long after Sankara or even Kumarila Bhatta (who according to a legend had "driven the Buddhists away" by defeating them in debates), sometime before the Muslim invasion into Afghanistan (earlier Gandhara).

Although today's most enthusiastic followers of Advaita believe Sankara argued against Buddhists in person, a historical source, the Madhaviya Sankara Vijayam, indicates that Sankara sought debates with Mimamsa, Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Yoga scholars as keenly as with any Buddhists. In fact his arguments against the Buddhists are quite mild in the Upanishad Bhashyas, while they border on the acrimonious in the Brahma Sutra Bhashya.

The Vishistadvaita and Dvaita schools believed in an ultimatelysaguna Brahman. They differ passionately with Advaita, and believe that his nirguna Brahman is not different from the Buddhist Sunyata(wholeness or zeroness) — much to the dismay of the Advaita school. A careful study of the Buddhist Sunyata will show that it is in some ways metaphysically similar as Brahman. Whether Sankara agrees with the Buddhists is not very clear from his commentaries on the Upanishads. His arguments against Buddhism in the Brahma Sutra Bhashyas are more a representation of Vedantic traditional debate with Buddhists than a true representation of his own individual belief. (See link: Sankara's arguments against Buddhism)

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Media Links & Blogs

Links- Media/Blogs

• Asia Tribune-2007 Spe Salvi
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• CHRM site-domestic inquiries
• Citehr- Maslow's peak experience
• Colombo Today- 2009- Center of Excellence
• Daily News -2002 e-Consciousness
• Receiving the Mayor of Vandeheim-2006
• Satellite interview with Prof.Tony Nader- 2000
• SL Govt Official News Portal
• Sri Lanka Inst of Directors- Managing with head & heart
• Sri Lanka today news on IT center
• Sri Lanka UN Fr Org News 2006
• Sunday Observer-2003- Pulse of harmony
• Sunday Times-2002 Going beyond the outer show
• Top 100 Science Professor Blogs -Psychology
• With Dr.Samanta KITT University