Taking Stock

The chapter contains a brief summary of the content of Chaps. 1 – 6 . It also addresses some objections against the book’s account of legal scholarship as a source of law as developed thus far. It is argued that these objections are based on a common mistake: namely, that of taking theoretical problems that touch the very notion of a source of law as if they only affected the account of the specific type of source discussed in this book. Some of the theoretical problems at issue can be confidently resolved within the confines of this short conclusion. Others will not be so confidently resolved; but it is still important to realize that they are problems about the general notion of a source of law, and not exclusively about the book’s specific account of legal scholarship as a source of law. This is an attempt to deflect, if not refute, the relevant objections.