Stark, A: Interdisziplinarität der Rechtsdogmatik

Legal dogmatics appears to be somewhat immune to moral facts as well as scientific knowledge. Non-legal reasons are, according to a widely held view, not or at least generally not relevant for doctrinal studies. Against this backdrop, I try to shed some light on questions such as: How does jurisprudence relate to other disciplines? What role do non-legal bodies of knowledge play in doctrinal deliberation? What is the relationship between legal and non-legal reasons? I argue for an account of legal dogmatics that makes apparent the potentially rich relationship between legal dogmatics and other disciplines. The incompatibility thesis, according to which knowledge of other disciplines cannot be integrated into doctrinal studies ( 11), is not justified, or so I argue. The main idea is to understand legal dogmatics as deliberation about what legal agents are rationally required to do. Legal agents act rationally, if, and only if, they correctly respond to the (decisive) normative reasons. The set of normative reasons, legal agents ought to respond to, consists of both legal and non-legal (normative) reasons. If and insofar as legal reasons run out, legal agents ought to respond to the given non-legal normative reasons. What does this mean for the capacity of legal dogmatics for interdisciplinarity? I differentiate between descriptive and normative legal dogmatics. Descriptive legal dogmatics identifies the content and structures of legal systems, i.e., within an action-based approach, the legal reasons. Within a descriptive approach, interdisciplinarity is limited for the legal facts that generate the legal reasons are its sole research object. Nevertheless, in many situations non-legal knowledge and reasons are required to identify the legal reasons, especially when the legal facts themselves entail references to external facts (see 10 I.). Normative legal dogmatics is directed at - hypothetical, potential or actual - legal actions; its goal is to identify the given legal and non-legal reasons agents ought to respond to in particular contexts. Insofar as legal reasons do not comprehensively determine legal actions, (the observed or imagined) legal agents are not legally obliged. From a legal perspective, they are free to choose any of the remaining actions. Though legal reasons do not further guide what legal agents ought to do in these situations, non-legal normative reasons - e.g. epistemic or moral reasons - usually do. The main task of interdisciplinary legal dogmatics is to identify these reasons ( 10 II.).