Justice Edward Coke’s concept of “artificial reason” distinguishes legal reasoning from natural logic accessible to everyone. It represents “an artificial perfection of reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience” rather than common sense. This idea is central because it justifies why legal expertise requires sustained training within the legal profession rather than general intelligence alone. The article uses this concept to explain why common law views its methodology as constructed through professional practice rather than derived from abstract philosophical principles.

Common law builds principles inductively from specific cases through analogy and precedent, moving from particular instances to general rules. In contrast, deductive reasoning starts with abstract principles and applies them to specific situations. The article explains that common law judges advance law “incrementally through the resolution of specific cases” rather than reasoning from comprehensive theoretical foundations. This case-by-case methodology makes common law skeptical of philosophers, economists, and theologians who prefer top-down deductive reasoning from abstract principles.

The article acknowledges that common law has not been completely isolated from philosophical thought. It mentions natural law ideas from Thomas Aquinas and William Blackstone, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and the legal positivism of H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz as philosophical systems that have shaped common law theory. This demonstrates that despite common law’s rhetorical opposition to abstract philosophy, it has selectively incorporated philosophical frameworks that illuminate aspects of legal language and practice when they prove useful for understanding how law actually functions.

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This article is classified as Advanced level. It requires understanding sophisticated legal and philosophical concepts, familiarity with abstract argumentation, and the ability to recognize paradoxes in intellectual positions. The vocabulary includes specialized terms like “epistemological,” “jurisprudence,” and “utilitarianism,” while the structure demands following complex arguments about the nature of legal reasoning. Advanced readers should be comfortable analyzing how professional disciplines construct their own methodological justifications and critiquing claims about the relationship between theory and practice.

The Case of Prohibitions established the principle that legal expertise trumps natural reason, even royal authority. When King James I claimed the right to decide legal matters based on his own reasoning, Justice Coke successfully argued that law requires specialized training inaccessible to those outside the profession. The article identifies this as “the foundational principle of practical law” because it established that legal decision-making belongs exclusively to those trained in the law’s “artificial reason.” This centuries-old case continues to justify why judges resist abstract philosophical intrusions into legal reasoning.

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Formal or “thin” conceptions, exemplified by Joseph Raz, focus on procedural requirements—open, clear, stable rules that constrain executive power and allow life planning—without making substantive moral judgments about justice. This version could theoretically exist in racist, authoritarian systems. Substantive or “thick” conceptions, articulated by scholars like Tom Bingham, insist the doctrine must include protection of human rights and dignity. Bingham rejected purely formal approaches, arguing states practicing persecution cannot truly observe rule of law regardless of procedural compliance, making the distinction crucial for evaluating colonial legal systems’ claims.

Terra nullius (“nobody’s land”) allowed Europeans to claim territories were legally unoccupied by denying Indigenous populations possessed political organization or land rights systems. This legal fiction freed colonizers from obligations to negotiate with political leaders or recognize existing property systems, as demonstrated by declaring entire continents like Australia terra nullius. The 1884-85 Berlin Conference exemplified this by treating Africa as conceptual terra nullius, with European powers and the United States dividing territories among themselves without African participation, systematically erasing precolonial legal structures to facilitate resource extraction and settlement.

Lord Sumner’s 1919 Privy Council judgment explicitly ranked Indigenous populations on a “scale of social organisation,” determining rights availability based on perceived proximity to European civilization. He stated some tribes were “so low” their conceptions couldn’t be reconciled with “civilised society,” while others possessed “hardly less precise” legal conceptions than English law. This judicial articulation formalized racial classification systems directly into legal doctrine, making rights conditional on colonial authorities’ subjective assessment of cultural advancement. The judgment exemplifies how ostensibly neutral legal principles encoded racial hierarchies, determining which communities fell inside or outside rule of law protections while remaining subject to law’s coercive force.

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This article is rated Advanced level. It demands sophisticated understanding of legal theory, colonial history, and critical scholarship, requiring readers to navigate complex arguments across multiple theoretical frameworks from Dicey to Chatterjee to Bingham. The vocabulary includes specialized legal terminology (ultra vires, terra nullius, repugnant) and abstract concepts about formal versus substantive justice. Success requires tracking evidence across diverse geographic contexts (Barbados, India, South Africa, Tanganyika, Kenya, Australia) while maintaining analytical focus on how ostensibly universal principles systematically produced racial hierarchies. The dense argumentation and critical theoretical apparatus make this suitable only for readers with strong academic reading backgrounds.

Sharma uses Thompson to demonstrate how even scholars critical of law’s role in reinforcing class relations nevertheless valorized rule of law as having “universal significance,” justifying this by citing Indian freedom fighters’ strategic use of the concept. This example illustrates the doctrine’s paradoxical endurance despite systematic failures—even those recognizing law’s oppressive functions often defend rule of law by pointing to anticolonial appropriation. However, Sharma counters that this appropriation reflected strategic choices for gaining legitimacy rather than genuine commitment to the doctrine, highlighting how the concept’s ideological power persists independent of its practical delivery, maintaining relevance for understanding contemporary neoimperial structures.

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The three pillars are Protect (state duty to regulate businesses), Respect (corporate responsibility to respect rights—voluntary, not binding), and Remedy (victims’ access to redress). This framework fails because it assumes three conditions that don’t exist in practice: states acting in citizens’ interests, voluntary corporate compliance, and effective remedial systems. Developing countries desperate for foreign investment lack leverage to impose strong regulations on powerful multinationals, who can demand favorable conditions including weakened human rights protections. Without binding legal obligations, the voluntary respect pillar becomes meaningless when economic pressure prevents states from enforcing standards.

The framework considers: (1) the extent of the violation, (2) the position or vulnerability of the victim, (3) the urgency of the situation, and (4) whether the corporation is the only actor that can fulfill the right. These factors work in combination—not every factor must be present, but their collective weight determines legal duty. The mine hospital scenario illustrates this: the child is vulnerable (age and poverty), the situation is urgent (severe injury requiring immediate care), and the mine hospital is the only nearby facility capable of providing treatment. Together, these circumstances create a legal obligation that wouldn’t exist if, for example, a fully equipped public hospital were equally accessible.

Multinationals exploit developing countries for cheap labor, natural resources, and weak regulatory frameworks that poverty-stricken nations cannot strengthen due to dependence on foreign investment. This creates what the author calls a “perverse incentive”—corporations actually benefit from communities remaining poor because poverty ensures continued access to exploitable conditions. The power imbalance means multinationals can negotiate favorable investment terms that relax laws protecting human rights. Unlike historical direct participation in abuses like slavery or apartheid, modern corporations may be “complicit” by operating within and profiting from structures that perpetuate poverty, even if they don’t directly cause specific violations.

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This article is classified as Advanced level. It requires understanding complex international law concepts, following multi-layered arguments about structural power imbalances, and distinguishing between direct responsibility and complicity. The vocabulary includes specialized legal terminology like “transnational corporations,” “socio-economic rights,” and “regulatory frameworks.” Advanced readers must grasp not just the author’s proposal but also why current frameworks fail, how hypothetical scenarios test legal principles, and the broader implications for global economic justice. The piece demands facility with both technical legal analysis and moral argumentation about corporate accountability.

Professor John Ruggie was appointed as the UN secretary-general’s special representative on human rights and transnational corporations in 2005. He developed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which established the current international framework based on the three pillars (Protect, Respect, Remedy). His work is significant because it represents the existing consensus that the author challenges—the idea that only states have binding duties under international law while corporations have merely voluntary responsibilities. Meyersfeld’s entire argument seeks to move beyond the Ruggie framework by proposing that corporations should have direct legal obligations under certain circumstances.

The Ultimate Reading Course covers 9 RC question types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multi-Statement T/F, Text Highlight, Fill in the Blanks, Matching, Sequencing, Error Spotting, and Short Answer. This comprehensive coverage prepares you for any reading comprehension format you might encounter.