An Interactive View Of Law

As a representative figure of the school of new natural law in the west, Fuller hadcontributed substantially to the natural law’s revival and the development of legal theories.During his lifetime besides jurisprudence, Fuller had also set foot in the fields of property law,contract law, law sociology, judicial practice and so on, and had published lots of articles andbooks related to these fields. Attracted by his outstanding legal knowledge, people from latergenerations continually interpret his thoughts. However, compared with the situation offoreign researches, domestic researches on Fuller are relatively scarce, incomplete andimperfect. Therefore this paper begins with the aim of injecting fresh blood into the domesticacademic researches concerning Fuller with the expectation of assisting future studies.This article interprets Fuller’s ideas from an interactive perspective. In Fuller’s writings,distinct from others he always emphasizes the importance of interactive relationships in legalsystems. By introducing sociological insights into legal research, Fuller opened a new doorfor the advancement of theories of law. It can be said that the introduction of interactiveperspective to law is Fuller’s innovation. Interactive view of law is one of the most importantcontributions Fuller had made for the development of law.Besides introduction and conclusion, the main body of this article is divided into fourparts:The introduction part main introduces my paper’s writing purpose, innovation, thepresent research situation and writing course followed by this paper, based on which theinteractive view of law is also briefly mentioned laying the groundwork for the maindiscussion.The first part introduces the context of interactive view of law. Firstly, the ideas andsignificance of interactive view of law are observed through the famous debates between Hartand Fuller. It can be said that rather than completed on an exact date the formation of Fuller’sinteractive point of law is reflected throughout his long research life. His points of lawmatured gradually and became known to others during those debating years. Researches onFuller’s view of law would seem empty without referring to Hart-Fuller debates since theirdifferences of legal opinions are mostly revealed in their fierce debates. By comparing theirlegal points, this part discovers the theory and practical problems distinctions between Fuller and Hart which then leads to the following writing.The second part is an internal examination of the interactive view of law. Through theanalysis of the theoretical foundation and major contents of the interactive view of law,Fuller’s views on the interactive view of law are further accurately explained. This section isthe focus of this paper as well as the basis for the following writings. The theoreticalfoundation of the interactive view of law not only includes common social interactions fromsociology, but also contains the significance rational person assumes as a social entity. Themajor contents of the interaction law include two typical representative interactive laws-contract and customary law, and comprise the interaction about legislators and law-abidingperson, internal moral and external moral, legal means and legal purposes. The interactiveview of law and the interactive legal relationships discussed in this part are essentialdemonstrations of Fuller’s interactive thoughts of law. Although the ideas mentioned in thispart are from different books of Fuller, they are not irrelevant, on the contrary they are closelyrelated, and they all belong to his interactive view of law.The third part observes the value and function of Fuller’s interactive view of law. It issuggested in Fuller’s writings that interactive law makes people devotedly obey and believe inlaw, provides with various solutions for different social problems so as to offer people withmore orderly and better lives, and exerts positive effects on the systematic design of thepursuit of law careers.The fourth part is an evaluation of Fuller’s interactive view of law. It is composed ofthree dimensions which respectively are: dynamic state, stability and integrity. The features ofdynamic state and stability are opposed to each other and at the same time are united underthe characteristics of integrity, which reflects the consistency and continuity of Fuller’s legalthoughts.Finally, the conclusion is a brief evaluation of the status of interactive view of law inFuller’s thoughts of law. The interactive view of law is not only his world view on laws, butalso his methodology. It is the foundation of his legal minds. Interactive view of law is a keyline for studies of Fuller.