This challenging book on jurisprudence begins by posing questions in the post-modern context,and then seeks to bridge the gap between our traditions and contemporary situation.
It offers a narrative encompassing the birth of western philosophy in the Greeks and moves through medieval Christendom, Hobbes, the defence of the common law with David Hume, the beginnings of utilitarianism in Adam Smith, Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the hope for enlightenment with Kant, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, onto the more pessimistic warnings of Weber and Nietzsche.
It defends the work of Austin against the reductionism of HLA Hart, analyses the period of high modernity in the writings of Kelsen, Hart and Fuller, and compares the different approaches to justice of Rawls and Nozick.
The liberal defence of legality in Ronald Dworkin is contrasted with the more disillusioned accounts of the critical legal studies movement and the personalised accounts of prominent feminist writers.
Chapter 1 The Problem of Jurisprudence, or Telling the Truth of Law: an
entry into recurring questions?;
Chapter 2 Origins: Classical Greece and the
idea of Natural Law;
Chapter 3 The Laws of Nature, Mans Power and God: the
synthesis of mediaeval Christendom;
Chapter 4 Thomas Hobbes and the Origins
of the Imperative Theory of Law: or nana transformed into earthly power;
Chapter 5 David Hume Defender of Experience and Tradition Against the
Claims of Reason to Guide Modernity;
Chapter 6 Immanuel Kant and the
Promotion of a Critical Rational Modernity;
Chapter 7 From Rousseau to Hegel:
the birth of the expressive tradition of law and the dream of Laws Ethical
Life;
Chapter 8 Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill: the early
development of a utilitarian foundation for law;
Chapter 9 John Austin and
the Misunderstood Birth of Legal Positivism;
Chapter 10 Karl Marx 1 Marx
(18181883) was bom in Trier, in what is now Germany. He was the oldest son
of a Jewish lawyer and the descendent of a long line of rabbis. His father
converted to Protestantism in order not to harm his legal business and Marx
was educated as a Protestant. Rationalism, humanitananism and a pragmatic
view of the world were the messages of his upbringing, rather than religious
fundamentalism. and the Marxist Heritage for Understanding Law And Society;
Chapter 11 Weber, Nietzsche and the Holocaust: towards the disenchantment of
modernity;
Chapter 12 The Pure Theory of Hans Kelsen;
Chapter 13 : 418). and
the theory of law as a self-referring system of rules;
Chapter 14 Liberalism
and the Idea of the Just Society in Late Modernity: a reading of Kelsen,
Fuller, Rawls, Nozick and communitarian critics;
Chapter 15 Ronald Dworkin
and the Struggle Against Disenchantment: or law within the interpretative
ethics of liberal jurisprudence;
Chapter 16 Scepticism, Suspicion and the
Critical Legal Studies Movement;
Chapter 17 Understanding Feminist
Jurisprudence;
Chapter 18 Concluding Remarks: or reflections on the
temptations for jurisprudence in post-modernity;
Wayne Morrison, LLB, LLM, PhD, Barrister and Solicitor (New Zealand), is a Lecturer in law at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.
