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Law in the age of uals
Eliáš, Karel
In this study, the author reflects on law and lawyering in modern times. The term ual was coined by philosopher and economist Tomas Kulka. It denotes intellectuals without intellect - a typical ual is a university graduate who knows what is currently intellectually fashionable, knows what is socially passé in scientific discourse and what is currently being debated, likes to boldly engage in discussions with references to fashionable authorities (Derrida, Foucault ...) and by choosing words such as paradigm, post- (modernism, etc.) and other incantations that they usually do not understand in depth. The result is chatter and superficiality. Law is one area where the Uali entity can present itself well. Weyr nearly a century ago and Bejcek quite recently characterized our law schools as law school puppy mills that have little in common with the ethos of universities. This is reflected among academics in faculties where conformism is growing, subject to bureaucratic evaluation of scholarship - how much one writes and where one publishes is more relevant. The result is a limited ability of practitioners to apply the law and the threat of turning lawyering into pedantry. The legislature is happy to accommodate this by proliferating statutory rules, progressively more and more detailed, and so the circle is complete. The author concludes by pointing out that society and science have found themselves in comparable situations several times, but that the voice of reason has always prevailed in the end.
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