The paper argues that an etymological approach to teaching law can makes learning law 'fun' because this approach illuminates our approaches to understanding of law  and opens up infinite ways to interrogate law. This generates novel questions and fresh positions, in contradistinction to a pedagogy, sacrificially, offering ‘answers’ which are then handed down to students as ‘things’ for them to memorise and repeat in their essays and examinations

Ressel, James

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This work has been submitted to NECTAR, the Northampton ElectronicCollection of Theses and Research.ArticleTitle: Teaching law etymologicallyCreators: Ressel, J.Example citation: Ressel, J. (2014) Teaching law etymologically. Law, Culture &Ideas Blog. 26/05/2014Version: Published versionNote:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0International License.http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/6634/NECTARTeaching Law Etymologically.Posted on 26/05/2014On 22 May 2014 I gave a paper at the University ofNorthampton annual Teaching & Learning conference. Theopportunity gave me a chance to reflect on why learning of lawis generally perceived by students as dry, boring and tedious:a subject to be tolerated in the interests of future gains.In the paper I tried to argue that critical approaches to teaching law cantransform the experience of learning law making the possibilities offreedom, equality and justice a reality. The argument was that most law students perceive learning law as“hard and boring” but necessary as an instrument to a singular outcome – a well-paid career in law!That is all fine, but the unintended consequence of this approach to law studies is that learning of law becomescommodified, measured by reference to the size of the ultimate financial return, and by reference to thecoefficient [1] of delivery of teaching of law. Thus, teaching of law risks being reduced to the realisation of aneconomic equation. I contend that such a transactional relationship is not an interesting or intellectually usefulexperience for the student or the teacher of law.I seek to argue that teaching and learning law can be ‘fun’, intellectually stimulating and creative, both for thestudent and the lecturer. It is claimed that conceptualisation and critical theories can help make teaching andlearning of law a transformative experience.In this brief extract from the paper, I argue that etymology illuminates our approaches to understanding oflaw  and opens up infinite ways to interrogate law which generate novel questions and fresh positions, incontradistinction to a pedagogy, sacrificially, offering ‘answers’ which are then handed down to students as‘things’ for them to memorise and repeat in their essays and examinations – the impossible logic of an abacus.One approach is a deconstruction technique using etymology to deconstruct ‘pre-given’ notions and meanings.This is where the questions we ask operate to transform our perception and truly reflect our lived historicalexperience of law.The questions include for instance considerations of how and why are we conscious of law, why we follow rulesand accept sovereignty of power or another authority, where does law come from and how can we feel it, howdoes law structure/define our relations and how we think about law and relate to our fellow creatures, cultureand society. In other words we are transforming our perception of law as a system of rules into dynamicorganisational system.At the start we notice that any basic dictionary will tell us that law is defined as an enforceable body of rulesthat govern society.A definition carries the attraction of apparent simplicity and clarity, even if not any aesthetic beauty, andseems to reflect our own inner common sense of law is and what law should be. However, because a definitionappears to be unquestionable amounting to a simulacrum of our own personal view of law, in short we haveinternalised something but we do not know not what it is and are at risk of losing our consciousness.Law, Culture & IdeasHowever, as we know definitions are closed systems justified on basis of exclusion. But, when we look a littlecloser at what the definition apparently suggests, or more significantly at what it does not say, cracks appearopening up vistas of alternative understanding and critique.Accordingly let us ‘unpack’ the definition of law to see if such an examination helps us to understand a littlemore what is meant by law and its sense. We will now attempt to deconstruct the following sentence to see ifsuch an analysis opens up the specificity of the text’s critical difference from itself [2].“An enforceable body of rules that govern society.”‘Enforceable’ – the verb ‘to enforce’ comes from Old French: ‘en’ meaning ‘to put in’ the (en)force. ‘Force’represents, inter alia, energy, physical power, intensity, control – all dynamic notions which when combinedwith ‘the put in’ may leads us to think of quite physical moving forces. We can then notice that ‘enforcement’comes in two basic forms (i) self-enforcement and (ii) enforcement by some sort of powerful and legitimateauthority. This then immediately opens up questions about power, violence, meaning, interpretation andsenses of the various links between power and the subject.‘Body’ – corpus – the word includes notions of a physical body often dead or a collection of facts or things.And it is in this mode that teaching of law can go seriously wrong, by this I mean that should lecturers viewthemselves as authoritative transmitters of the ‘body’ or ‘corpus’ of accepted knowledge passively ‘received’ bythe acolyte students. The notion of a corpus of knowledge can become often become literally a corpse, a body ofunquestioned dead facts transmitted generally by rote and tested by written examination.‘Rule’ – is a fascinating idea which carries many senses: for instance in Old French ‘riule’ designates a“principle or maxim governing conduct, formula to which conduct must be conformed”. In Norman ‘reule’means “rule, custom, (religious) order“, and in Latin ‘regula’ means “straight stick, bar, ruler” and is relatedto ‘regere’ “to rule, straighten, guide” measure and make straight lines.As a verb it means “to control, guide, direct.” The Latin word ‘regulare’ means to“establish by decision“, but we may ask whose decision is to be established?It also means to “mark with lines” and from late 19th century it means “to dominate orprevail“, as in Rule Britannia illustrated here. Even from this quick survey of the etymology of the word ‘rule‘ we gather ideas of measurement, straight lines,compulsory recipes for conduct, conquering ruler directing and making decisions. We see reflected in the wordnotions of religious custom and order, and the indispensable connection between the political and the legal.‘Govern’ – is the next word we can look at. In Latin the word ‘gubernare’ signifies someone who seeks “todirect, rule, guide, or govern”. And in Greek the word refers to nautical notions of ‘kybernan’ meaningsomeone who wants “to steer or pilot a ship, or to direct it”. The word carries a sense of both moving forwardand being subject to direction – in short the dialectic of directed director. One who directs and steers yet isdirected to steer, and in a more objective external sense that ‘sense of the rule’, in so far as this idea embodiesthe subjective and objective characteristics of the notion.‘Society’ – As we know, for many the notion of ‘society’ can be politically and intellectually a troublesomeconcept. In October 1987 Mrs Thatcher said: “… there is no such thing as society. There are individual menand women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and peoplemust look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing asentitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”[3].Of course she did not quite mean that we are all atomised beings floating free in the ‘Never-Never’ Peter Panland, in autonomous spaces, but rather she meant that the relational social bonds of civil society should bereduce to legalised connections and beyond that the common obligations of the state need be reduced to thoseof least possible responsibility. She was a precursor of the idea that social relations are best expressed astransactional relations most efficiently implemented as legalised economic relations. Of course it is obvious,and beyond the scope of this paper, to discuss the vulgarly simplistic but self-serving extension of her ideas.Yet key to this social disengagement notion is the traditional, reactive concept of the patriarchal familyoperating to doubly legalise and abstract the notion of the ‘family’ through the authority of religion and thesanction of state law.This notion is supplemented by (at one level) the quasi-legal relationship of the ‘duty to our neighbour’ which,interestingly, we find echoed in law of tort.  And to round things off Mrs Thacher introduces the notioncontractualisation into social, civic and even political life based on the idealised equivalency if not mutuality ofthe exchange of commodified rights and expectations underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘entitlements’, implicitlyunjust,  designating the exclusion of the Other.Therefore, it follows that a ‘definition’ in fact permits a superficially logical  mechanism to draw conclusions,even if we find any such determined ‘conclusion’ socially and morally deplorable, allowing us to jump toirrefutable conclusions, permitting us by its internal logic to discount any considerations of extraneous humanobligation or (in law) legitimate expectation. In short the human desire for order is reduced to the logic ofeconomics.Accordingly, the point of the etymological approach is to illustrate an approach to teaching law which helps touncover not only the historical layers of accrued meanings, the logic of opposition, and variegatedinterpretations of legal concepts which can liberate the discipline of law from the binary hierarchies of definedrules painfully memorised and elaborately replicated by students, opening up critical avenues for questioningand transforming our sense of law exposing its difference from itself and even making law ‘fun’!Footnotes and references:[1] The word ‘coefficient’ is used here to signify the multiplicative factor to an expression.[2] J A Cuddon A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London: Blackwell, 3rd ed., 1991.[3] Interview with the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to the Women’s Own magazine, October31 1987 available at: http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htmSuggested citation: J Ressel ‘Teaching law etymologically.’  Law, Cult. & Ideas Blog (26 May 2014)(available at  http://lawcultureblog.wordpress.com/ )Share this:Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MoreThis entry was posted in Higher Education, Law, Teaching and learning, Uncategorized and tagged deconstruction, etymology. 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Teaching law etymologically

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