Kantianism, Postmodernism and Critical Legal Thought presents a challenging alternative theory of legal philosophy. The central thesis of the book suggests an accommodation between three of the most influential contemporary theories of law, Kantianism, postmodernism and critical legal thought. In doing so, it further suggests that the often perceived distance between these theories of law disguises a common intellectual foundation. This foundation lies in the work of Immanuel Kant. Kantianism, Postmodernism and Critical Legal Thought presents an intellectual history of critical legal thinking, beginning with Kant, and then proceeding through philosphers and legal theorists as diverse as Heidegger and Arendt, Foucault and Derrida, Rorty and Rawls, and Unger and Dworkin. Ultimately, it will be suggested that each of these philosophers is writing within a common intellectual tradition, and that by concentrating on the commonality of this tradition, contemporary legal theory can better appreciate the reconstructive potential of the critical legal project.

The philosophy of law - inquiry into the origins, nature and theory of laws and legal principles, and those concepts that structure the practice of law - is of great importance in moral and political philosophy, as well as being a major area of philosophical concern in its own right. Clear, concise and comprehensive, this is the ideal introduction to the philosophy of law for those studying it for the first time. Drawing upon both the analytic Anglo-American and Continental schools of philosophy, Law: Key Concepts in Philosophy summarises the work of key thinkers in the philosophy of law, including Rousseau, Hobbes, Austin, Hegel, Mill, Marx, Dworkin and Rawls. It provides lucid and thorough explication and analysis of central concerns in legal philosophy, covering criminal law, civil law and constitutional law. Finally, the text also addresses key issues in contemporary philosophy of law, including human rights, international law and questions of race and gender.

Teaching the Essentials of Law and Economics covers the core areas of law and economics, also known as the economic analysis of law, in non-technical terms with guiding notes throughout the text. Replete with cases and illustrations, it may be used both as a lecture guide for instructors, and as a basic text for students. The author provides an up-to-date and succinct account of the application of economic analysis to legal doctrines, institutions and legal reform. Classic cases taken from Anglo-American common law, with some consideration of civil law, along with more recent material, are used to illustrate the analysis. The book has a non-technical, built-in system designed to guide teaching as well as private study of the material. Professors and instructors teaching this growing field of inquiry as well as legal scholars interested in the influence of economics on American law, economists analyzing the incentive structure of legal systems and doctrines, public-policy students considering legal reform and judges and legal personnel seeking a succinct treatment of economics of law will be indebted to the author for this guide to Teaching Essentials of Law and Economics.

Explaining and Understanding Adjudication is the first book that attempts to analyse and define the methodology and values of contemporary accounts of adjudication, which can be divided into orthodox philosophies on the one hand and heretical accounts on the other. The author offers an incisive and original analysis of how these supposedly incompatible accounts actually differ. Through an evaluation of Neil MacCormick, Joseph Raz and Ronald Dworkin as the principal exponents of the orthodoxy and Duncan Kennedy and Roberto Unger providing the heretical accounts, William Lucy argues that there are few important differences between the two. Rather, the author concludes, both theories have acute problems in relation to the methodology and values they apply in interpreting adjudication.

This is a well-argued explication of a set of general criteria for deciding whether specialized adjudication in specialized tribunals or courts is more appropriate than generalist adjudication in ordinary court. Legomsky tests his theory against the working of the Administrative division of the New Zealand High Court, and ends with an assessment of the difficulties in comparison due to the diversity of governmental systems in states with different constitutional arrangements. A significant contribution to an increasingly important topic in American law--the role of specialized adjudicative units--this volume will be a valuable work for students and scholars of public law, the legal system, comparative law, and socio-legal studies.

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the advisory role of the International Court of Justice in light of its jurisprudence and overall contribution over a period of more than 55 years. The author highlights the "organic connection" between UN organs and the Court and the Court 's contribution as one of the UN 's principal organs to the Organisation. The basic argument of this study is that the advisory function should be understood as a two-sided process involving the interplay between UN organs and the ICJ. The request for and the giving of an advisory opinion is a collective coordinated process, involving more than one organ or part of the Organisation.

What can we say about justice in a pluralist world? Is there some universal justice? Are there universal human rights? What is the function of the state in the modern world? Such are the problems dealt with by the 20th world congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (Amsterdam, June 2001) and published in this book, which is for legal and social philosophers, students of human rights, and political philosophers.

The scandal of this collection lies not just in its equating law and resistance but also in its consequent revision of those critical, realist, social, and even positivist theories that would constitute law in its dependence on sovereign or society, on some surpassing power, or on the state of the judge's digestion. There is as well a further provocation offered by the collection in that the most marginalized of resistances through law are found to be the most destabilizing of standard paradigms of legal authority. Instances of such seeming marginality explored here include the resistances of colonized and indigenous peoples and resistance pursued through international law. What this 'marginal' focus also reveals is the constituent connection between modernism, imperialism and that legalism produced by the ready reduction of law in terms of sovereign, society and such. In all, the collection makes a radical contribution to social, political and postcolonial theories of law.

This is an outline of a coherence theory of law. Its basic ideas are: reasonable support and weighing of reasons. All the rest is commentary.

These words at the beginning of the preface of this book perfectly indicate what On Law and Reason is about. It is a theory about the nature of the law which emphasises the role of reason in the law and which refuses to limit the role of reason to the application of deductive logic.

In 1989, when the first edition of On Law and Reason appeared, this book was ground breaking for several reasons. It provided a rationalistic theory of the law in the language of analytic philosophy and based on a thorough understanding of the results, including technical ones, of analytic philosophy. That was not an obvious combination at the time of the book s first appearance and still is not. The result is an analytical rigor that is usually associated with positivist theories of the law, combined with a philosophical position that is not natural law in a strict sense, but which shares with it the emphasis on the role of reason in determining what the law is. If only for this rare combination, On Law and Reason still deserves careful study.

On Law and Reason also foreshadowed and influenced a development in the field of Legal Logic that would take place in the nineties of the 20th century, namely the development of non-monotonic ( defeasible ) logics for the analysis of legal reasoning. In the new Introduction to this second edition, this aspect is explored in some more detail."

The need to balance power between the Member States and the Union, and between public power and the market, has created powerful constitutional dilemmas for the European Union. This new book describes and analyzes the new Economic Constitution developed by the European Court of Justice. In doing so it discusses different constitutional models and forms of legitimacy and evaluates the limits to state and public intervention in the market, the division of competences between Member States and the EU, the principle of non-discrimination, and the notion of fundamental rights. This leads to a critical examination of the process of constitution-making in the EU, and the role of the Court of Justice in this process.

This book restores to view a masterpiece of beauty and legal scholarship, which has been lost for almost two hundred years.  Produced anonymously in 1838, The Tree of Legal Knowledge is an elaborate visualization in five large colored plates of the law as stated in Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.  Intended as “an assistant for students in the study of law,� the study aid was not a simple diagram but a beautiful tree with each branch and twig labeled with legal terms and concepts from the Commentaries.  Not for law students only, the original was also intended to be of use to the practicing attorney and educated gentleman “in consolidating his learning and forming an instructive and ornamental appendage to an office.� Although Blackstone’s Commentaries had been first published eighty years earlier, it remained the primary source for knowledge of English law and required reading for American law students.  The Commentaries remain relevant today and are frequently cited by the U.S. Supreme Court as a source for the original understanding of legal rights and obligations at the time of American Independence.  Despite its artistic beauty and academic significance, The Tree of Legal Knowledge had seemingly disappeared shortly after its publication.  It is not included in the collection of any library, including the Library of Congress or in Yale University’s Blackstone Collection, the largest in the world.  It is not listed in the comprehensive Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone, edited by Ann Jordan Laeuchli, published for the Yale Law Library in 2015.   The present volume reproduces the only extant copy of The Tree of Legal Knowledge.  It includes an introduction by the editor that places The Tree in historical context and identifies the anonymous author, an otherwise unknown lawyer.  In addition, it reprints the original author’s introduction and “explanation of the branches,� both extensively annotated.  This book restores this lost masterpiece to its proper place in legal history.  The Tree is a beautiful—and accurate—depiction of English law as expounded in Blackstone’s Commentaries, the single most important book in the history of the common law.

Analytical jurisprudence has been mostly silent on the role of precedent in legal adjudication. What is the content of a judge's precedent ideology,or the rule of precedent-recognition, by means of which the ratio of a case is to be distinguished from mere dicta? In this study, the author identifies six types of judicial precedent-ideology, among them judicial legislation, systemic construction of the underlying reasons of law in the Dworkinian sense, and a radical re-evaluation of the merits of a prior case in later adjudication, as envisioned by the American Realists. These competing models are tested against judicial experiences in the UK, US, France, Italy, Germany and Finland. By this means Lon Fuller's famous 'internal morality of law' is shown to function rather poorly in the context of precedents, and the author therefore suggests a redefinition of the rule which makes it work for precedent. This, in turn leads the author to confront fundamental questions about the normative nature of law. Is Kelsen's grundnorm or Hart's ultimate rule of recognition a valid rule, in the image of legal rules proper, or is it merely a social fact, observable only in the practices and behaviour of judges and other officials? The author claims that Hart is caught between Kelsen and J.L. Borges, the late Argentinian fabulist, in so far as the ontology and epistemology of the rule of recognition are concerned. This leads the author to the conclusion that the two predicaments affecting analytical positivism, namely the threat of endless self-referentiality, or infinite regress, can only be accounted for by means of recourse to the philosophy of deconstruction as posited by Jacques Derrida.

This book provides a systematic and detailed introduction to the formation process and current development of China's socialist legal system. The classification of the constitution and constitution-related laws, criminal law, civil and commercial law, administrative law, economic law, litigation and non-litigation procedural law, social law, and the specifics of each sector of law are explained, which is a good guide for understanding the framework of China's legal system and the study of each sector of jurisprudence.

The legal essays by Michael Bayles in this collection display his commitment to utilitarianism both as a moral theory and an analytical device. A utilitarian must choose between the best of all possible alternatives and so must lay out the alternatives and thus their consequences carefully and completely. As it happens, there is no better way of understanding why something is as it is in the law, and no better way to lay the foundations for criticism and improvement, than to lay out what the alternatives are, carefully distinguishing them, their justifications, and their implications for changing other areas of the law and for changing our relation to the law. Bayles was a master at such work, and each essay thus repays careful study for anyone concerned about the law. The essays cover a wide variety of topics, from contract law to the criminal law, from torts to theory, and form a natural set. Laying out the alternatives in one area makes it much clearer how and why alternatives in other areas are acceptable or required. Interconnections within the legal system as a whole not readily visible when studying one area of the law become obvious when several are laid out side-by-side using the analytical skill required by a good utilitarian.

This book explores the constitutional, legally binding dimension to legisprudence in the light of the German Federal Constitutional Courts approach to rational lawmaking. Over the last decades this court has been remarkably active in applying legisprudential criteria and standards when reviewing parliamentary laws. It has thus supplied observers with a unique material to analyse the lawmakers' duty to legislate rationally, and to assess the virtues and drawbacks of this strand of judicial control in a constitutional democracy. By bringing together legislation experts and public law scholars to elaborate on 'legisprudence under review', this contributed volume aspires to shed light on the constitutionalisation of rational lawmaking as a controversial trend gaining ground in both national and international jurisdictions. The book is divided into five parts. Part I frames the two key issues pervading the whole collection: the intricate relationship between judicial review and democracy, on the one hand, and the possibility of improving and rationalizing the task of legislation under the current circumstances of politics, on the other. Part II provides an overview of the judicial review of rational lawmaking, laying special emphasis on the duty of legislative justification imposed on lawmakers by the German Constitutional Court. Part III is devoted to the review of the systemic rationality of legislation, in particular to the requirements of legislative consistence and coherence as developed by this court. Contributions in Part IV revolve around the judicial scrutiny of the socio-empirical elements of rational lawmaking, with the control of legislative facts and impacts and the problem of symbolic laws being the central topics. Finally, Part V draws on the German case law to discuss the links between rational lawmaking, balancing and proportionality, and the interdependence between process review and substantive review of legislation.

Drawing on political, legal, national, post-national, as well as American and European perspectives, this collection of essays offers a diverse and balanced discussion of the current arguments concerning deliberative democracy. Its contributions' focus on discontent, provide a critical assessment of the benefits of deliberation and also respond to the strongest criticisms of the idea of democratic deliberation. The essays consider the three basic questions of why, how and where to deliberate democratically. This book will be of value not only to political and democratic theorists, but also to legal philosophers and constitutional theorists, and all those interested in the legitimacy of decision-making in national and post-national pluralistic polities.

This volume is a thematic study in legal history that uses past and present landmark court cases to analyze the legal and historical development of moral regulatory policies in America and resulting debates. Using a critical variable approach, the book demonstrates how different elements of the legal process have historically influenced the litigation of various moral issues. Five moral policies are included: abortion, sodomy, pornography, criminal insanity, and the death penalty. The book's framework for analysis uses examples from English legal history and links them to American cases, demonstrating how moral regulatory policies are impacted by the legal process: by laws, by judges and juries, by legal scholars, and by attorneys.

Following a brief introduction, Chapter 1 examines how protagonists in the bitter moral and legal controversy over abortion in America have sought to fortify their positions with the views of prominent English legal authorities. The authors discuss the role of English legal scholars in court opinion and oral arguments in Webster and in Roe v. Wade, and debates Roe's interpretation of the English legalists. Chapter 2 describes how attempts to expand a right of privacy under the federal Constitution to include sodomy failed the test for common law rights (Rights of Englishmen) in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), and includes a history of sodomy in early English and American law. Chapter 3 discusses pornography standards and laws, highlighting the history of legal actions taken against Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in both England and the U.S., demonstrating the role of precedent in American judicial efforts to define pornography. In Chapter 4, which deals with the criminal insanity defense, the influential role of the defense attorney on case outcomes is illustrated in cases such as England's McNaughton case (1843) and America's Hinckley case (1982). Chapter 5 deals with cruel and unusual punishment throughout U.S. and English history. The book ends with an epilogue which ties together the idea of the American legal process as an inherited English process, reiterating how decisionmakers continually mine the past to find traditions and sources of moral values for justifying or criticizing current laws and policies.

Judge Richard A. Posner's work on the economics of public law is a critical component of the interaction between the new law and economics movement and public choice theory. It exemplifies the parallel influence that these two important intellectual movements have had on the current understanding of legal institutions. Together with an insightful introduction by Francesco Parisi, this volume brings together his most important contributions on areas such as: the economics of constitutional law and legislation the economics of criminal law the economics of labour law and employment discrimination the economics of antitrust. The Economics of Public Law will be essential reading for economists, lawyers and judges alike.

In 1788 John Adams created a sublime ambition for all nations - 'a government of laws and not of men'. In the intervening years we have come to learn that legislation itself works through the interpretations of the many men and women who work on the inside and the outside of the law. Effective regulation thus depends not only on scrupulous legal analysis, with its appeal to precedent, conceptual clarity and argumentation, but also on sound empirical research, which often reveals diversity in implementation, enforcement and observance of the law in practice. In this outstanding, worldly-wise book Leeuw and Schmeets demonstrate how to bridge the gap between the letter and the delivery of the law. It is packed with examples, cases and illustrations that will have international appeal. I recommend it to students and practitioners engaged across all domains of legislation and regulation.' - Ray Pawson, University of Leeds, UK Empirical Legal Research describes how to investigate the roles of legislation, regulation, legal policies and other legal arrangements at play in society. It is invaluable as a guide to legal scholars, practitioners and students on how to do empirical legal research, covering history, methods, evidence, growth of knowledge and links with normativity. This multidisciplinary approach combines insights and approaches from different social sciences, evaluation studies, Big Data analytics and empirically informed ethics. The authors present an overview of the roots of this blossoming interdisciplinary domain, going back to legal realism, the fields of law, economics and the social sciences, and also to civilology and evaluation studies. The book addresses not only data analysis and statistics, but also how to formulate adequate research problems, to use (and test) different types of theories (explanatory and intervention theories) and to apply new forms of literature research to the field of law such as the systematic, rapid and realist reviews and synthesis studies. The choice and architecture of research designs, the collection of data, including Big Data, and how to analyze and visualize data are also covered. The book discusses the tensions between the normative character of law and legal issues and the descriptive and causal character of empirical legal research, and suggests ways to help handle this seeming disconnect. This comprehensive guide is vital reading for law practitioners as well as for students and researchers dealing with regulation, legislation and other legal arrangements.

The pioneering work of Judge Richard Posner has brought to light the broad relevance of economics to virtually all areas of law. During the last three decades, Judge Posner has provided seminal contributions to the development of an overarching economic theory of law, with applications including traditional legal subjects, such as torts and contracts, as well as non-standard topics, such as his study of primitive law and ancient customs. This selection of Posner's essays reveals the importance of economic efficiency as a driving force in the formation of private law. The rigorous and insightful introduction by Francisco Parisi discusses Posner's unparalleled influence on the evolution of law and economics and the understanding of the economic foundations of private law. In particular he discusses: * anthropology and the emergence of law * tort law * contract law * family law * the economics of privacy. The Economics of Private Law will be essential reading for economists, lawyers and judges alike.

This book examines the law and its practice in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The objective is to understand the logic of the legal system in the UAE through a rounded analysis of its laws in context. It thus presents an understanding of the system on its own terms beyond the accepted Western model. The book shows how the Emirati law differs from the conventional rule of law. The first section of the book deals with the imperial, international, and cultural background of the Emirati legal system and its influences on some of the elements of the legal system today. It maps the state's international legal obligations according to core human rights treaties showing how universal interpretations of rights may differ from Emirati interpretations of rights. This logic is further illustrated through an overview of the legal system, in federal, local, and free zones and how the UAE's diversity of legal sources from Islamic and colonial law provides legal adaptability. The second section of the book deals mainly with the contemporary system of the rule of law in the UAE but at times makes a detour to the British administration to show how imperial execution of power during the British administration created forerunners visible today. Finally, the debut of the UAE on the international scene contributed to an interest in human rights investigations, having manifestations in UAE law. The work will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the areas of Comparative Constitutional Law, Legal Anthropology, Legal Pluralism, and Middle Eastern Studies.

This book explores the ambit of the notion of persecution in international law and its relevance in the current geopolitical context, more specifically for refugee women. The work analyses different models for interpreting the notion of persecution in international refugee law through a comparative lens. In particular, a feminist approach to refugee law is adopted to determine to what extent the notion of persecution can apply to gender related forms of violence and what are the challenges in doing so. It proposes an interpretive model that would encourage decision makers to interpret the notion of persecution in a manner that is sufficiently protective and relevant to the profiles of refugees in the 21st century, most particularly to refugee women. The book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, immigration law, European law, and refugee law as well as those working in the areas of international relations.

Philosophers, legal scholars, criminologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists have long asked important questions about punishment: What is its purpose? What theories help us better understand its nature? Is punishment just? Are there effective alternatives to punishment? How can empirical data from the sciences help us better understand punishment? What are the relationships between punishment and our biology, psychology, and social environment? How is punishment understood and administered differently in different societies? The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment is the first major reference work to address these and other important questions in detail, offering 31 chapters from an international and interdisciplinary team of experts in a single, comprehensive volume. It covers the major theoretical approaches to punishment and its alternatives; emerging research from biology, psychology, and social neuroscience; and important special issues like the side-effects of punishment and solitary confinement, racism and stigmatization, the risk and protective factors for antisocial behavior, and victims' rights and needs. The Handbook is conveniently organized into four sections: I. Theories of Punishment and Contemporary Perspectives II. Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment III. Sciences, Prevention, and Punishment IV. Alternatives to Current Punishment Practices A volume introduction and a comprehensive index help make The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment essential reading for upper-undergraduate and postgraduate students in disciplines such as philosophy, law, criminology, psychology, and forensic psychiatry, and highly relevant to a variety of other disciplines such as political and social sciences, behavioral and neurosciences, and global ethics. It is also an ideal resource for anyone interested in current theories, research, and programs dealing with the problem of punishment.

"Nietzsche and Legal Theory" is an anthology designed to provide legal and socio-legal scholars with a sense of the very wide range of projects and questions in whose pursuit Nietzsche's work can be useful. From medical ethics to criminology, from the systemic anti-Semitism of legal codes arising in Christian cultures, to the details of intellectual property debates about regulating the use of culturally significant objects, the contributors (from the fields of law, philosophy, criminology, cultural studies, and literary studies) demonstrate and enact the sort of creativity that Nietzsche associated with the "free-spirits" to whom he addressed some of his most significant work.

"Nietzsche and Legal Theory" is an anthology designed to provide legal and socio-legal scholars with a sense of the very wide range of projects and questions in whose pursuit Nietzsche's work can be useful. From medical ethics to criminology, from the systemic anti-Semitism of legal codes arising in Christian cultures, to the details of intellectual property debates about regulating the use of culturally significant objects, the contributors (from the fields of law, philosophy, criminology, cultural studies, and literary studies) demonstrate and enact the sort of creativity that Nietzsche associated with the "free-spirits" to whom he addressed some of his most significant work.