UNDERSTANDING LEGAL UNDERSTANDING - THE LEGAL SUBJECT AND THE PROBLEMOF LEGAL COHERENCE

Jurisprudence traditionally approaches the law as an external object; the jurisprudential scholar generally seeks to describe legal doctrine in terms of its objective and observable properties. Professor Balkin argues that seemingly fixed, inherent characteristics of legal doctri ne-most notably, whether or not a given body of law is ''coherent'' or possesses ''integrity''-are better understood as projections from the individual observer. Judgments about legal coherence are in reality t he result of only one of many interpretive postures an observer might take, but one that implicates the integrity of the observer's own worl d view. Furthermore, this process of interpretation does not leave the observer untouched, for the process of interpretation itself construc ts the observer.