Study Questions for Plato’s Minos and Twining’s “General Jurisprudence”
Plato’s Minos is a very old text. It takes a while to get through a Platonic text. So be sure to give yourself enough time to read this text more than once. It is an important text for our class. This text introduces us to the three main sources of law. You will want to note these three sources as we will be using them to categorize the various justifications, we will be reviewing for why a law is a law that should be followed. Once you’ve identified the three sources of law, you can practice applying the concepts to the Twining text.
Plato’s Minos
1-3. Specifically, what are the three answers that Socrates’ companion provides? List them out. They each can be stated as a single simple sentence. (They are given in the first 3 pages.)
4. What is Socrates’ concern about city’s resolutions or decrees of the state?
5. Socrates and his companion discuss the nature of what is just. He then goes into a series of examples about the rules of farming, medicine, cooking, etc., which are given as an analogy for how we ought to think about the nature of law). What do they conclude about things that are just, the law, and various cultures?
Twining’s “General Jurisprudence”
6. Under the new constitution, legislators of a particular country decided that they should enforce the new constitution even though there were no sanctions that could be levied against the government officials for not doing so (note this, as it is important as we start to think about the nature of law). They decided to start by enforcing article 24. What does article 24 stipulate? What do they decide to focus on when it comes to enforcing this article?
7. Twining goes over three arguments showing the difficulties or dilemmas they faced with enforcing the law. What are they?
Bonus- look at these dilemmas and think about the sources of law – where law comes from or what makes a law a law. In Minos Socrates and his companion identify the three main sources of law we will be discussing this semester. Granted Socrates only thinks one is the correct source, but that is Socrates and he may not be fully right after all the jury is still out on answering the questions what is law. Taking the three sources of law identified in the Minos, you should be able to look at these three arguments or some of the claims made in the Twining’s article and identify the what source of law each argument or claim falls under.
8. Twining’s provides two lists at the end of this excerpt. What does the first list describe and why does he see the features covered in this list to be problematic especially when we think about what law is and realize that mostly Western European/Anglo-American understanding of law has dominated legal scholarship and thus development of law in colonized lands?
9. Looking at the second list. How does this list challenge some of the underlying assumptions given in the first list? Why is this a good thing in both creating laws and for our endeavor of trying to determine the nature of law itself? (This last question is one that you have to infer as it isn’t explicitly covered in the text.
