I have been teaching Philosophical-Policy And Legal Design (PPLD) for over twenty years, and with it, both my undergraduate and graduate students have found that they can more readily integrate philosophy, public policy and law, whether they go on to law school, Ph.D. studies or seek employment in the private or public sector. My students have applied their acquired skills for local, state and federal government in the United States, Canada and the European Union, and in private planning and policy-oriented firms. The highest priority in teaching PPLD is to insist on critical thought and the comprehensive application of theory (philosophy) to practice.
As the core course in my teaching sequence, 301-401 is intended to introduce the methodology and then hone the student’s skills in critical thought, by instructing them on identifying essential concepts in philosophical works and considering how they could apply those concepts to understand both the metaphysical groundwork of status-quo law, and the empirical requirements for making real policy change. In this way 301-401 builds a foundation of skills in writing, speaking and critical thought that the student can then apply more generally to other courses, and the analysis of whatever policy and law they encounter.
There are two basic challenges that the average student encounters in this course. First, they must acquire the ability to read primary-source philosophical texts and derive a coherent logic of argument from them. Second they must learn to conceptualize and then render persuasive policy-legal argument both verbally and in writing. I address both of these challenges from within the context of PPLD through the adoption of a specific argument format that the students must use for all of their assignments. Their writing skills entering the course are often poor and always varied, with most students not recognizing the difference between argument and narrative. However, they eventually see that the format provided helps them not only to write clear and concise arguments that avoid polemic and present a definitive logic but also to organize the way they think, study and talk about the reading. Overall, the format requires the student to see philosophy in terms of an author’s ‘logic of concepts’ that then is applied through a policies ‘logic of investigation’ to enrich its philosophical foundation and its legitimacy through justification.
Specifically, the core objective and the skill I emphasize is to learn to write short concise policy-legal argument. My mandatory format (Gillroy-Writing Argument) divides the argument into six parts: Question, Point of Departure, Thesis, Logical Entailments (including a counterargument), Evidence and Conclusion. These arguments are evaluated on two dimensions: Form and Sophistication of Content. The student is first introduced to the argument framework and given graduated ungraded exercises in order to learn how to employ it. These involve writing and rewriting the same practice argument until they have the basic form/content mix established. Their final projects are evaluated for their correct use of this form and for the level of sophistication in both reading philosophical systems and converting these into PPLD paradigms for application to specific law and policy.
Over the years my students have rendered policy paradigms from the philosophical arguments of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Thomas Aquinas, J.J. Rousseau, among others, as well as from more contemporary theoretical perspectives such as sociological functionalism, green theory, feminism, and critical theory. These paradigms have been applied to a cross-section of policy issues from international, comparative, constitutional and environmental law, including R2P, the law of war, moral-legal rights, endangered species, clean air and water legislation, environmental risk, national security, WTO and trade, resource extraction, welfare policy and the rise of right-wing parties in both American and European elections. The axiom this course is built upon is: Law Is Codified Policy And Policy Is Persuasive Moral-Philosophical Argument. The objective of my teaching in this course, is to integrate theory and practice to enhance both and to teach the art of short concise, and therefore persuasive, argument to operationalize this synthesis. The key is to combine academic rigor with practical policy decision-making and blackletter law. In this way, I intend to bring depth and complexity to the cases and practical decisions that are the empirical anchor of every policy-law student’s studies. In this way, I work to improve the student’s capacity to understand the philosophical argument beneath status-quo law and to generate a range of alternative philosophical-policy arguments for change.
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John Martin Gillroy
John Martin Gillroy is a Professor of Philosophy, Law & Public Policy and Founding Director of Environmental Policy Design Graduate Programs, Lehigh University, USA, and Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Law Queen’s University, Canada. He is also the editor of a book series for Palgrave-Macmillan entitled: Philosophy, Public Policy And Transnational Law. Currently he is involved in a three-book project entitled Philosophical Method, Policy Design & The International Legal System with the objective to illuminate the origin of modern international law using a logic of concepts derived from David Hume, the current dilemmas of the international legal system through the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, and the future imperatives of transnational authority as suggested by the philosophical-policy of Immanuel Kant.
