Under the influence of a narrowly understood scientific legal positivism, jurisprudence has neglected interdisciplinary research for a long time. However, today there are strong practical and scholarly reasons for an interdisciplinary analysis of law triggered, e.g., by bioethics, life sciences, economics and ecology. And yet the very subject matter of law shimmering between normativity and descriptivity seems to resist all attempts to be taken in by common enterprises across disciplines: How then is the necessary interdisciplinary research in jurisprudence (...) possible without abandoning its core, legal dogmatics? This question was discussed at a special working group during the IVR-World Congress in Cracow. The papers have been polished and updated for publication. The volume falls into two parts: One is directed at the basic conceptual and institutional questions of interdisciplinary research in jurisprudence; the other one concentrates on one fruitful and highly important field of interdisciplinary research, constitutionalism. The volume brings together a truly international and in itself interdisciplinary group of experts in the field, from Finland to Brazil and from Spain to Greece. (shrink)

The dynamic development of science and technology in the last decades has led to new challenges in jurisprudence. This holds for individual fields of doctrinal law as well as the concerned fields of jurisprudence. It is especially significant for the structure of justice, the efficiency of law as a steering instrument of society, and the empirical conditions of legal responsibility. In a jurisprudential perspective, the philosophy of law is rather engaged with the adaptiveness of its traditional principles and (...) categories or the capacity to come to terms with the new developments and less concerned with concrete matters of law. (shrink)

This book's aims are to determine the importance of legal philosophy in legal education and in addition to develop alternative methods for teaching law in general and the philosophy of law in particular. In this context, the individual essays in this volume discuss the alternatives and tendencies in the quest for an adequate model of teaching and learning jurisprudence. Common to all of them is a commitment to the necessary integration of theoretical and practical knowledge, of traditional case and (...) lecture methods with non-traditional models such as cinema, drama, and literature, and of the dominant legal perspective with alternative approaches utilizing information technologies such as computers and the internet. Effective teaching and learning must favor critical and strategic thinking, dialectical and dialogical inquiry or research, problem-solving, role-playing, and skill-developing over mere rote memorization of existing rules and standard answers. (shrink)

The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprudence with a Hegelian theme. The editors are committed to the idea that Hegel is the future source of great energy and insight within the legal academy.

The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprudence with a Hegelian theme. The editors are committed to the idea that Hegel is the future source of great energy and insight within the legal academy.

In response to the obesity epidemic, much discussion in the public health and child advocacy communities has centered on restricting food and beverage marketing practices directed at children. A common retort to appeals for government regulation is that such advertising and marketing constitutes protected commercial speech under the First Amendment. This perception has allowed the industry to function largely unregulated since the Federal Trade Commission 's foray into the topic, termed KidVid, was terminated by an act of Congress in 1981. (...) The FTC has since focused on self-regulation as a potential solution to such concerns. However, this method of control has proven ineffective to protect children, and has led to growing recognition that federal regulation may be necessary.Since KidVid, the evidence has only mounted that children are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of advertising. Over the same time period, the exposition of commercial speech jurisprudence has plateaued, as the Supreme Court has not decided a pure commercial speech case since 2002. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 193-194 [Access article in PDF] A Comment on Christopher Ciocchetti:"The Responsibility of the Psychopathic Offender" Daniel W. Shuman Questions of responsibility for serious harm are complex and potentially divisive. The way in which we frame these questions and the criteria by which we assess answers to them are colored, in part, by the lens though which we view them. I am a law (...) professor whose writings includes issues relating to criminal responsibility of person with mentally disabilities and I come to this commentary from that perspective. For me questions of moral responsibility raise psychological and philosophical, as well as legal, questions.Ciocchetti's (2003) paper addressees the criminal responsibility of the psychopathic offender. Not sure quite what the author meant by this label, I began to try to understand the concept of psychopathic offender by picking up my DSM-IV-TR and found no reference to such a diagnostic category. Absent a handy reference in the DSM, I looked in the paper for some other definition or recognition of the category of psychopathic offender and found no satisfactory grounding in any body of sound research. Left with the author's unsupported assertions that such a category of persons exists and that they behave in ways the author asks me to accept without support, my lawyer instincts cautioned me to proceed carefully. The psychopathic offender the author describes might well exist, but I am not persuaded of that, nor would be my legal colleagues, absent proof.Next, to the author's thesis that "[t]he offender must have the capacities necessary to understand relationships to justify holding that offender responsible" (p. 176) and that because psychopaths lack this capacity they should not be held criminally responsible. Is the author proposing a new test for criminal responsibility? Certainly no test for criminal nonresponsibility based on mental disability (i.e., insanity defense) in Anglo-American jurisprudence, or any other with which I am familiar, makes status (i.e., a diagnostic category) exculpatory for criminal responsibility. Rather, every test addresses the impact of a mental illness or disorder on the cognitive or volitional capacity of the offender at the time of the offense. The author offers no reason to reject the approach taken for the last several hundred years [End Page 193] by Anglo-American jurisprudence. Moreover, to the extent that status or diagnostic category is relevant in the insanity defense in Anglo-American jurisprudence, character or personality disorders (the genus to which I take it that psychopathy belongs) are often specifically excluded from consideration. For example, the Texas Penal Code (Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 8.01 (Vernon 1994)) states that:It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that, at the time of the conduct charged, the actor, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, did not know that his conduct was wrong. The term "mental disease or defect" does not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.The federal Insanity Defense Reform Act raises the same issue: The government relies on the legislative history of 18 U.S.C. § 17, which states: "The concept of severity was added to emphasize that non-psychotic behavior disorders or neuroses such as an 'inadequate personality,' 'immature personality,' or a pattern of 'antisocial tendencies' do not constitute the defense.".... The government argues that because Dr. Lorenz would have testified that Salava was not psychotic but suffered from antisocial personality disorder, his testimony was not relevant to either prong of the insanity defense under the statute.... As a general matter, the government's point is well-taken. It seems clear that Congress intended by its inclusion of the modifier "severe" to place certain "disorders" outside the purview of the insanity defense altogether. United States v. Salava, 978 F.2d 320, 323 (7th Cir. 1992) Nowhere in the paper does Chiochetti acknowledge or address these societal judgments of moral responsibility that have already rejected a far more modest version of his proposal in categorically ruling out character or personality disorders from inclusion as... (shrink)

This year is the centenary of the birth of philosopher John Rawls and the semi-centenary of his monumental A Theory of Justice. This essay explores the differences between political opposition and political resistance as reflected in his work. Rawls is remembered for the careful conditions he imposed in the Vietnam-War era upon justifiable civil disobedience in “nearly just” societies. It is less well known that he came to regard the United States as a fundamentally unjust society. The nation has shown (...) itself not merely unserious about political equality—the cornerstone of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness—but hostile to it. The Supreme Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence sanctifies spending as speech and denies Congress the power to try to level the electoral playing field. In the Supreme Court’s Constitution, substantive political equality is of no value. The upshot is that civil disobedience, conceived as an appeal to a just constitution, is no longer possible in the United States. Political resistance may be permissible, however, within the bounds of right, “in such ways as promise some success.” This essay ekes out Rawls’s suggestive remarks about the justification of political resistance and attempts to extend them to current conditions. (shrink)

THE opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence invokes, as every American should know, "the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God." The import of this invocation may be discerned by examining the appeals to natural law in the polemical literature of the American revolutionary period against the background of natural law/natural rights philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, within the particular historical context of events constituting the American Revolution. The (...) phrase "the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God" in the Declaration is revealing. It simplifies what had, in earlier times, been referred to as "fundamental law," omitting and de-emphasizing, however, some rather essential elements. Historically, fundamental law had always been esteemed to be a law superior to statutory or positive law. Unless the latter conforms to the former, it is not valid, and invalid positive laws are null and void, so that there is no obligation to obey them. In the history of British jurisprudence, which includes colonial American jurisprudence, fundamental law embraced divine law, natural law, the British constitution beginning with Magna Carta, common law, and the colonial charters. Appeals to fundamental law were made when protesting statutory or positive laws and decrees. Thus the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress in October, 1774, invokes "the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the British constitution, and the several charters and compacts" as the moral, rational, and ultimate legal basis for protesting alleged British encroachments on American rights. Yet less than two years later, the Declaration of Independence, abandoning the British constitution and dissolving the political band—the charters and compacts—between Great Britain and America, rests simply on "the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.". (shrink)

The problem of justice lies at the heart of the philosophy of jurisprudence. Then what justice does, the purpose for which a legal system exists, the central principle of jurisprudence, is to provide, for concrete cases, a basis for decisions as to what is just. In the lecture I will first of all deal with Kant's ideas about justice, as shown in his works. They can also be seen as examples of a concept of justice from a previous (...) epoch. The magnitude of these distances will become apparent when one bears in mind what Kant meant, and in what context, when he used this concept. At the same time Kant is the thinker who is most often mentioned in the contemporary discourse on justice. This is for two reasons. Firstly, Kant's position is exemplary for that position that holds that justice is the trancendental centre of any theory of jurisprudence; secondly, Kant is seen as the most significant thinker of that epoch, which is seen as the starting point for the present: the modern European Enlightenment. Finally I would like to contrast the concept of justice which has been developed in this way with the concept that seems fitting for the concrete situation of the Istanbul Congress of 2003. (shrink)

The problem of justice lies at the heart of the philosophy of jurisprudence. Then what justice does, the purpose for which a legal system exists, the central principle of jurisprudence, is to provide, for concrete cases, a basis for decisions as to what is just. In the lecture I will first of all deal with Kant's ideas about justice, as shown in his works. They can also be seen as examples of a concept of justice from a previous (...) epoch. The magnitude of these distances will become apparent when one bears in mind what Kant meant, and in what context, when he used this concept. At the same time Kant is the thinker who is most often mentioned in the contemporary discourse on justice. This is for two reasons. Firstly, Kant's position is exemplary for that position that holds that justice is the trancendental centre of any theory of jurisprudence; secondly, Kant is seen as the most significant thinker of that epoch, which is seen as the starting point for the present: the modern European Enlightenment. Finally I would like to contrast the concept of justice which has been developed in this way with the concept that seems fitting for the concrete situation of the Istanbul Congress of 2003. (shrink)

Analytical jurisprudence and the legal mainstream perceive legal rights in an interactionist fashion, pursuant to a right-obligation duality. The Paper suggests that this is principally because legal positivism and the analytical Anglo-Saxon legal tradition ground their theories on logical positivism and the Wittgensteinian premise that meaning is produced and asserted in social use, i.e. both consensually and contextually. The paper suggests that there is a surplus of meaning which exists beyond social use and which cannot be conceptualized within the (...) sociolinguistic confines of Wittgenstein’s logic of language. This surplus of meaning corresponds to the essential core of legal rights, which, following Aristotle’s induction and philosophy of the essences, constitutes a necessary property and τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι of legal rights, namely a state of affairs or a state of being that cannot be altered without their necessary breach or, indeed, the negation of their very meaning. The Paper discusses the shortcomings of the Wittgensteinian approach and revisits the philosophical foundations of legal rights by employing Aristotle’s induction and theory of the essences, which the Paper connects to the phenomenological method and particularly Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Husserl’s transcedental phenomenology. This is a process of abstraction and insight, which aspires to induce a rational revisiting of the general theory of legal rights and address the surplus of meaning that Wittgensteinian logic leaves semantically uncovered. (shrink)

In institutional settings affecting the formulation and implementation of international foreign and security policy, nation-states are influenced by Western standards of jurisprudence without explicit concern for religiously grounded legal frameworks. The question at issue here is whether there is a role for Islamic law in the formulation of international law, given recent literature examining this conjunction. For some, cultural symmetry requires attention to Islamic law, e.g., the Islamic law of nations, in the same way Western modernity evolved contemporary international (...) law out of a concept of a “law of nations”. In a historical period of asserted fundamentalist Islamic ideology as well as post-9/11 neo-conservative political ideology, there is ample need for negotiation of culture, including philosophical foundations of law, in which case attention to Islamic jurisprudence may well be a positive development to advance the cause of an evolving international legal order. (shrink)

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty of the United Kingdom parliament is often presented as a unique legal arrangement, one without parallel in comparative constitutional law. By giving unconditional power to the Westminster parliament, it appears to rule out any comparison between the Westminster Parliament and the United States Congress or the German Bundestag, whose powers are limited by their respective constitutions. Parliament in the UK appears to determine the law unconditionally and without limit. Nevertheless, a fuller understanding of parliamentary sovereignty (...) as a legal and constitutional doctrine shows that this first impression is false. The nature of the British unwritten constitutional order is entirely similar to the written one prevailing in the United States or Germany. This is because the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, contrary to Dicey’s classic view, does not consist in a single dominant idea but in a number of related and mutually supporting principles that constitute higher law. The way in which these principles interact is parallel to the interaction of the main clauses of the United States Constitution or the German Basic Law. This analysis shows that the constitution, written or unwritten, never requires a ‘pouvoir constituent’. The constitution emerges from the law as the result of moral and political principles that breathe life into our public institutions. (shrink)

In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

Charles James William Pfoundes (1840?1907), a young emigrant from Southeast Ireland, spent most of his adult life in Japan, received a Japanese name ?Omoie Tetzunostzuke?, first embraced and then turned against Theosophy and, from 1893, was ordained in several Japanese Buddhist traditions. Lacking independent means but educated, intellectually curious, entrepreneurial, fluent in Japanese and with a keen interest in Asian culture, Pfoundes subsisted as a cultural intermediary, explaining Japan and Asia to both Japanese and foreign audiences and actively seeking involvement (...) in global expositions and congresses, in Asia and beyond. Drawing on a previously unstudied collection of Pfoundes' personal documents, this paper first outlines Pfoundes' unusual career and then focuses on his engagement, in the last 15 years of his life, in actual or proposed international congresses and expositions in London, Chicago, Japan, Hanoi, St Louis and Oregon. The paper thereby draws attention, through the forgotten figure of Charles Pfoundes, to the distinctive nineteenth century phenomenon of great international expositions and their associated congresses, viewing these complicated events as another kind of crossroads; innovative nodes and material stimuli to the kinds of travel, cultural communication and interaction which, like monastic, trade, political and ethnic networks, helped to exchange and promote modern representations of Buddhism. (shrink)

Almost twenty years ago, a genuinely new school of thought emerged in the field of jurisprudential methodology. It is a pragmatist school. Roughly, the pragmatists contend that, when inquiring about the nature of law, we should evaluate potential answers based on practical criteria. For many legal philosophers, this contention seems both unclear and unhinged. That appearance is lamentable. The pragmatist approach to jurisprudential methodology has received insufficient attention for at least two reasons. First, the pragmatists do not conceive of themselves (...) as comprising a school; in fact, these proponents have different names for their common position, which makes it hard to see the commonalities. Second, the most famous statement of the pragmatist view has received withering criticism, criticism that has not been sufficiently answered, a fact that may lead opponents of pragmatism, as well as potential supporters, to doubt that a viable view of this kind can be held. This Essay aims to serve as a corrective. (shrink)

Jurisprudence is the prudence of jus, law's consciousness and conscience. Throughout history, when thinkers wanted to contemplate the organisation of society or the relationship between authority and the subject, they turned to law. All great philosophers, from Plato to Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber had either studied the law or had a deep understanding of legal operations. But jurisprudence is also the conscience of law, the exploration of law's justice and of an ideal law or equity at (...) the bar of which state law is always judged. Jurisprudence brings together 'is' and 'ought', the positive and the normative, law and justice. But after a long process of decay, legal theory is today characterised by cognitive and moral poverty. Jurisprudence has become restricted and academically peripheral, a guidebook to technocratic legalism and a legitimation of the existent. Critical jurisprudence returns to the classical tradition of a general philosophy of law and adopts a much wider concept of legality. It is concerned both with posited law and with the law of the law. All legal aspects of the economic, political, emotional and physical modes of production and reproduction of society are part of critical jurisprudence. This widening of scope allows a radical rethinking of the nature of rights, justice, sovereignty and judgement. A political philosophy of justice today must examine the political economy of law; transitions from Empire to nation; ideological and imaginary constructions through which we understand ourselves and relate to others; ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity that both discipline bodies and offer sites of resistance. Law's complicity with political oppression, violence and racism has to be faced before it is possible to speak of a new beginning for legal thought, which in turn is the necessary precondition for a theory of justice. Critical Jurisprudence offers an ethics of law against the nihilism of power and an aesthetics of existence for the melancholic lawyer. (shrink)

“Experimental jurisprudence” draws on empirical data to inform questions typically associated with jurisprudence or legal theory. Scholars in this flourishing movement conduct empirical studies about a variety of legal language and concepts. Despite the movement’s growth, its justification is still opaque. Jurisprudence is the study of deep and longstanding theoretical questions about law’s nature, but “experimental jurisprudence,” it might seem, simply surveys laypeople. This Article elaborates and defends experimental jurisprudence. Experimental jurisprudence, appropriately understood, is (...) not only consistent with traditional jurisprudence; it is an essential branch of it. (shrink)

Until recently, little was known of H.L.A. Hart’s private life. That has now changed with the publication of Nicola Lacey’s A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream. Drawing on Hart’s notebooks and correspondence, Lacey paints an illuminating portrait of Hart, which reveals that despite his public success he struggled with internal perplexities, including his sexual orientation, Jewish identity, intellectual insecurity, and unconventional marriage. Yet, as critics have noted, the connection between these revelations and the development of (...) Hart’s ideas is unclear. Moreover, one cannot help but wonder whether by focusing on these aspects of Hart’s personal life, Lacey has missed an opportunity to explore certain basic questions about his jurisprudence and its link to wider intellectual currents. For example, linguistics, psychology, and the philosophy of language and mind are much different today than they were in the 1940s and 1950s, yet Lacey does not discuss how such familiar events as the overthrow of logical positivism, the demise of behaviorism, the rise of generative linguistics, or the broader cognitive revolution of which they were a part actually impacted Hart or should influence our understanding of his legacy. Surprisingly, none of these developments are taken up in this book, leading one to ponder the significance of their absence. (shrink)

This book is a collection of Shahid Murtada Mutahhari’s essential papers on philosophy, theology, ‘irfan (Islamic mysticism), usul al-fiqh (principles of jurisprudence) and morality. The six parts together serve as both a comprehensive survey of the fundamentals of different branches of Islamic studies and a general guide to understanding the basic teachings of Islam.

This paper was written for a forthcoming Cambridge University Press anthology titled "On Philosophy in American Law" that commemorates the 75th anniversary of Karl Llewellyn's essay of the same name. Karl Llewellyn was a founder of the Legal Realist movement in American jurisprudence, and his essay is most obviously read as a brief for that movement, in which he argues that a Realist focus on underlying social needs better explains the course of American legal history than do the competing (...) natural law, positivist and formalist schools. Without contesting the merits of this conventional reading, I argue that Llewellyn's essay also makes an implicit case for another, quite different point: the need for Continental philosophical approaches to law in contemporary American jurisprudence. In particular, I argue that the conception of philosophy upon which Llewellyn relies is, with one exception, deeply Hegelian. The one exception lies in Llewellyn's residual belief that, at least to a limited extent, philosophy can change the world as well interpret it. This belief places him squarely in the camp of post-Hegelian thinkers, the camp that also includes contemporary Continental political and legal philosophers. I conclude by suggesting how the post-Hegelian tradition responds to some of the deepest conundrums of contemporary American jurisprudence, using the problem of affirmative action as an example. (shrink)

John Finnis proposes that practical reason finds the basic meaning of all human choice and action in a set of self-evident ends. Finnis terms these ends, "basic goods." He suggests that "integral human fulfillment" is attained by honoring a set of equally self-evident requirements governing consistent respect for these same "basic goods." Such requirements have the character of moral obligation. In this view, the civil law exists to advance the observance of one such requirement: "that one foster and favour the (...) common good." The normative evaluation of law follows from this same requirement. Finnis considers Aquinas his precursor. Thomas does indeed assume the existence of self-evident goods of choice and action, but, in contrast to Finnis's goods, which are not based in ontology, Thomas's represent modes of becoming fully a human being according to a conception of human nature. H. L. A. Hart is a liberal thinker who was Finnis's contemporary and teacher at Oxford. A comparison of Finnis and Hart shows that Hart's characteristically modern perspective interprets the data of moral consciousness in a way which rejects not only Aquinas's ontology, as does Finnis, but goes further and rejects Finnis's cognitive interpretation of "basic goods." Comparison also shows that Hart shares Finnis's concept of law as technique, but unlike Finnis, who still grasps law in relation to a moral purpose, Hart's considers such a technique to be morally neutral. These patterns of similarity and difference between the natural law jurisprudence of John Finnis and the theories, respectively pre-modern and liberal, of Aquinas and Hart point to the distinctive character of Finnis's "basic goods" reasoning and highlight some of its salient strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

The author is a legal and moral philosopher who has applied the insight and methods of Wittgenstein to a range of topics in constitutional law, criminal law and theories of justice. This collection aims to offer his most important and influential essays, together with an introductory essay which reviews and develops his contribution to legal and moral philosophy.

This essays argues that Freud’s vision of the rule of law may be worthwhile pondering by legal scholars. It can heighten awareness of its unconscious dimensions and point to a variety of ways in which the law functions as part of culture or civilization, rather than as a system with its own rules. The first two parts of the essay seek to reconstruct Freud’s notion of the rule of law as a dialectical or paradoxical civilizatory force, restraining the passions even (...) though they drive it. These two parts retrace Freud’s genealogy of the law’s prehistoric origins and unconscious dynamics, which can be found in Totem and Taboo and, in summary form, in Moses and Monotheism. Then, the third section critically assesses the problems and limitations of some of the uses legal scholars made of Freud’s genealogy. Finally, the essay returns to the intellectual context of Freud’s conception of the rule of law, concluding with the claim that a Freudian perspective implies, in fact, that legal studies should be conceived as cultural studies. (shrink)

This book explores how globalisation influences the understanding of law. Adopting a broad concept of law and a global perspective, it critically reviews mainstream Western traditions of academic law and legal theory. Its central thesis is that most processes of so-called 'globalisation' take place at sub-global levels and that a healthy cosmopolitan discipline of law should encompass all levels of social relations and the legal ordering of these relations. It illustrates how the mainstream Western canon of jurisprudence needs to (...) be critically reviewed and extended to take account of other legal traditions and cultures. Written by the one of the foremost scholars in the field, this important work presents an exciting alternative vision of jurisprudence. It challenges the traditional canon of legal theorists and guides the reader through a field undergoing seismic changes in the era of globalisation. This is essential reading for all students of jurisprudence and legal theory. (shrink)