"Just Like Little Dogs": The Law Should Speak with Veracity and Respect

Abstract

This article proposes veracity and respect as basic guides for law. It thus supplements dominant lines of thought which emphasize instrumentalist criteria such as promoting efficiency, maximizing utility, and deterring and remedying harm. This article proposes that it is a great good for a judge, a legislator, and all who speak as the law to exercise the virtue of veracity and to speak with respect, and that it is especially bad in the case of such legal officers to depart from those practices. It points out some implications for family law.