Gabel On Reification In Legal Reasoning: Meeting The Feminist Demand On Legal Reasoning
Ngozi Chukwuemeka Aja Ph.D
Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University of Port Harcourt Rivers State, Nigeria.
Keywords: Demand, Feminist, Implications, Legal Reasoning, Reification
Abstract
This paper adopted the textual analytical method to analyze Peter Gabel’s notion of reification in law, showing how it helps in meeting feminist demand on legal reasoning. It explained that feminists expect legal reasoning to give effect to women’s unique experiences which they argue are not captured in enacted legal rules owing to the patriarchal nature of law itself. Feminists’ expect that legal reasoning, through practical reasoning (Katherine Bartlett), accommodates extralegal factors identified as public policy (Clare Dalton), which rejuvenate laid-down rules for justifying women’s perspectives. Gabel charted an easy way for this feminist demand by identifying as political reasoning, Delton’s public policy which merges with legal reasoning amounting to ‘politico-legal reasoning’. His insistence that politico-legal reasoning is meaningless because both legal and political reasoning involve abstractions enabled him recognize Bartlett’s practical reasoning and account for how it operates. Gabel argued politico-legal reasoning only makes meaning when abstractions correspond with the concrete social and economic world. The correspondence enables appreciation of changes in unique experiences of women occasioned by social, economic and political changes constantly witnessed in the society and also helps in periodical estimation of the extent legal reasoning gives effect to women’s perspectives.