The increasing transnationalisation of regulation - and social life more generally - challenges the basic concepts of legal and political theory today. One of the key concepts being so challenged is authority. This discerning book offers a plenitude of resources and suggestions for meeting that challenge. Chapters by leading scholars from a wide variety of disciplines confront the limits of traditional state-based conceptions of authority, and propose new frameworks and metaphors. They also reflect on the methodological challenges of the transnational context, including the need for collaboration between empirical and conceptual analysis, and the value of historicising authority. Examining the challenge offered by transnational authority in a range of specific contexts, including security, accounting, banking and finance, and trade, Authority in Transnational Legal Theory analyzes the relations between authority, legitimacy and power. Furthermore, this book also considers the implications of thinking about authority for other key concepts in transnational legal theory, such as jurisdiction and sovereignty. Comprehensive and engaging, this book will appeal to both legal academics and students of law. It will also prove invaluable to political scientists and political theorists interested in the concept of authority as well as social scientists working in the field of regulation. Contributors include: P.S. Berman, R. Cotterrell, K. Culver, M. Del Mar, M. Giudice, N. Jansen, N. Krisch, S.F. Moore, H. Muir Watt, H. Psarras, S. Quack, N. Roughan, M. Troper, N. Walker

The increasing transnationalisation of regulation - and social life more generally - challenges the basic concepts of legal and political theory today. One of the key concepts being so challenged is authority. This discerning book offers a plenitude of resources and suggestions for meeting that challenge. Chapters by leading scholars from a wide variety of disciplines confront the limits of traditional state-based conceptions of authority, and propose new frameworks and metaphors. They also reflect on the methodological challenges of the transnational context, including the need for collaboration between empirical and conceptual analysis, and the value of historicising authority. Examining the challenge offered by transnational authority in a range of specific contexts, including security, accounting, banking and finance, and trade, Authority in Transnational Legal Theory analyzes the relations between authority, legitimacy and power. Furthermore, this book also considers the implications of thinking about authority for other key concepts in transnational legal theory, such as jurisdiction and sovereignty. Comprehensive and engaging, this book will appeal to both legal academics and students of law. It will also prove invaluable to political scientists and political theorists interested in the concept of authority as well as social scientists working in the field of regulation. Contributors include: P.S. Berman, R. Cotterrell, K. Culver, M. Del Mar, M. Giudice, N. Jansen, N. Krisch, S.F. Moore, H. Muir Watt, H. Psarras, S. Quack, N. Roughan, M. Troper, N. Walker

This open access book pays homage to Reza Banakar, who passed away in August 2020, exploring the many different areas of socio-legal research that he worked on and influenced. It begins with a summary of his career and explains how he sparked a debate on the identity and aims of legal sociology. The book is then split into 5 sections: - Theory, including chapters on normativity and the stepchild controversy; - Methods and interdisciplinarity, illustrating how Banakar encouraged socio-legal scholars to push the boundaries of existing socio-legal knowledge through interdisciplinary imagination and methodological flexibility; - Legal culture, with particular focus on Iran - 2 areas of special interest for Banakar; - Law and science, covering topics such as human rights, the right to life, and the COVID-19 pandemic; and - Applied sociology of law, inspired by Banakar's engagement with empirical research and case studies. As well as honouring Reza Banakar's memory and unique thinking, the book aims to advance the sociology of law by demonstrating the interconnectedness of the legal and the social from a broad range of perspectives. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Lund University Libraries.

This book presents a distinctive approach to the study of law in society, focusing on the sociological interpretation of legal ideas. It surveys the development of connections between legal studies and social theory and locates its approach in relation to sociolegal studies on the one hand and legal philosophy on the other. It is suggested that the concept of law must be re-considered. Law has to be seen today not just as the law of the nation state, or international law that links nation states, but also as transnational law in many forms. A legal pluralist approach is not just a matter of redefining law in legal theory; it also recognizes that law's authority comes from a plurality of diverse, sometimes conflicting, social sources. The book suggests that the social environment in which law operates must also be rethought, with many implications for comparative legal studies. The nature and boundaries of culture become important problems, while the concept of multiculturalism points to the cultural diversity of populations and to problems of fragmentation, or perhaps to new kinds of unity of the social. Theories of globalization raise a host of issues about the integrity of societies and about the need to understand social networks and forces that extend beyond the political societies of nation states. Through a range of specific studies, closely interrelated and building on each other, the book seeks to integrate the sociology of law with other kinds of legal analysis and engages directly with current juristic debates in legal theory and comparative law.

This book presents a unified set of arguments about the nature of jurisprudence and its relation to the jurist's role. It explores contemporary challenges that create a need for social scientific perspectives in jurisprudence, and it shows how sociological resources can and should be used in considering juristic issues. Its overall aim is to redefine the concept of sociological jurisprudence and outline a new agenda for this. Supporting this agenda, the book elaborates a distinctive juristic perspective that recognises law's diversity of cultural meanings, its extending transnational reach, its responsibilities to reflect popular aspirations for justice and security, and its integrative tasks as a general resource of regulation for society as a whole and for the individuals who interact under law's protection. Drawing on and extending the author's previous work, the book will be essential reading for students, researchers and academics working in jurisprudence, law and society, socio-legal studies, sociology of law, and comparative legal studies.

This book presents a distinctive approach to the study of law in society, focusing on the sociological interpretation of legal ideas. It surveys the development of connections between legal studies and social theory and locates its approach in relation to sociolegal studies on the one hand and legal philosophy on the other. It is suggested that the concept of law must be re-considered. Law has to be seen today not just as the law of the nation state, or international law that links nation states, but also as transnational law in many forms. A legal pluralist approach is not just a matter of redefining law in legal theory; it also recognizes that law's authority comes from a plurality of diverse, sometimes conflicting, social sources. The book suggests that the social environment in which law operates must also be rethought, with many implications for comparative legal studies. The nature and boundaries of culture become important problems, while the concept of multiculturalism points to the cultural diversity of populations and to problems of fragmentation, or perhaps to new kinds of unity of the social. Theories of globalization raise a host of issues about the integrity of societies and about the need to understand social networks and forces that extend beyond the political societies of nation states. Through a range of specific studies, closely interrelated and building on each other, the book seeks to integrate the sociology of law with other kinds of legal analysis and engages directly with current juristic debates in legal theory and comparative law.

This book presents a unified set of arguments about the nature of jurisprudence and its relation to the jurist's role. It explores contemporary challenges that create a need for social scientific perspectives in jurisprudence, and it shows how sociological resources can and should be used in considering juristic issues. Its overall aim is to redefine the concept of sociological jurisprudence and outline a new agenda for this. Supporting this agenda, the book elaborates a distinctive juristic perspective that recognises law's diversity of cultural meanings, its extending transnational reach, its responsibilities to reflect popular aspirations for justice and security, and its integrative tasks as a general resource of regulation for society as a whole and for the individuals who interact under law's protection. Drawing on and extending the author's previous work, the book will be essential reading for students, researchers and academics working in jurisprudence, law and society, socio-legal studies, sociology of law, and comparative legal studies.

The Politics of Jurisprudence explores what jurisprudence is about, what it seeks to do, how it does it and - most importantly - how its conclusions can be brought to bear on everyday problems of legal practice and major social, moral or political issues. It selects material to illustrate general approaches to legal theory and to explore professional and political uses to which that theory has been put.

The Sociology of Law offers a distinctive view of contemporary law in Western societies and provides a clear analytical framework for the study of the diverse literature relating to its field. This new edition has been enlarged and re-written to take account of recent theoretical literature, changes of emphasis in interpretation and new research on legal practice, dispute processing and law enforcement since the last edition appeared in 1984.

This important collection of essays by a leading legal theorist seeks to re-locate the relationship between the traditional concerns of legal theory and the sociology of law, by establishing a consistent theoretical approach to the analysis of law in contemporary Western societies. This book is based upon previously published essays which have been extensively revised and updated, and offers an important contribution to the study of law and social theory.

In this new collection of essays, Paul van Seters brings together an international group of scholars from diverse academic backgrounds to reflect upon the remarkable rise of communitarianism in contemporary studies of law and society. Taking account of the intricate relationship between law and communitarianism, these essays critically assess the communitarian perspective in order to gain a more systematic insight into its distinctive constraints and the special opportunities it provides. At its core, this work contends that law necessarily presupposes community, but also essentially extends it. Arguing that communitarianism must be understood as an effort to reconstruct liberalism, and not just debunk it, Communitarianism in Law and Society explores what good is to come of this movement for legal theory and practice.

In this new collection of essays, Paul van Seters brings together an international group of scholars from diverse academic backgrounds to reflect upon the remarkable rise of communitarianism in contemporary studies of law and society. Taking account of the intricate relationship between law and communitarianism, these essays critically assess the communitarian perspective in order to gain a more systematic insight into its distinctive constraints and the special opportunities it provides. At its core, this work contends that law necessarily presupposes community, but also essentially extends it. Arguing that communitarianism must be understood as an effort to reconstruct liberalism, and not just debunk it, Communitarianism in Law and Society explores what good is to come of this movement for legal theory and practice.

Taking a broad view of social theory, this book demonstrates the importance of this theory for the study of contemporary law. Through studies of the work of Weber, Durkheim, Gurvitch, Habermas, Luhmann, Derrida, Bourdieu, Foucault, Schmitt, Neumann and others, the essays address such fundamental topics as the changing forms of regulation, law's relations with morals and beliefs, law and democracy and prospects for the rule of law in the context of globalisation.