Gardner's pluralistic virtue jurisprudence

John Gardner is not identified with virtue jurisprudence, even though his work provides important insights on virtue and law. This chapter focuses on one main tenet of his virtue jurisprudence, namely, the claim that virtues are foils to each other. Gardner’s virtues-as-foils view is an original thesis that illuminates important aspects of the nature, structure, and phenomenology of virtue. Nonetheless, it is also problematic. It is in tension with central tenets of virtue theory, that is, that virtues are constitutive components of the good life and that the virtuous person embodies a valuable normative ideal; it is also questionable from a phenomenological and developmental point of view; and it has troubling implications as an account of institutional virtue. Despite these problems, the virtues-as-foils thesis is of paramount importance for virtue-oriented work in law, in that it paves the way for the development of a pluralistic version of virtue jurisprudence.