From Shapiro, Scott J., Legality, Harvard University Press (2013):
[M]ost legal academics and practitioners find the question “What is law?” distinctly unmoving. Unlike philosophers, they simply don’t see the point of worrying or speculating about the nature of law and frequently dismiss such questions as formal and arid, far too scholastic to be of any real interest or value. Richard Posner captured this sentiment well in his Clarendon Lectures: “I have nothing against philosophical speculation. But one would like it to have some pay-off; something ought to turn on the answer to the question ‘What is law?’ if the question is to be worth asking by people who could use their time in other socially valuable ways. Nothing does turn on it.”
