Exploring Law's Empire

Exploring Law's Empire
Author: Scott Hershovitz
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2006-09-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191021652

Exploring Law's Empire is a collection of essays examining the work of Ronald Dworkin in the philosophy of law and constitutionalism. A group of leading legal theorists develop, defend and critique the major areas of Dworkin's work, including his criticism of legal positivism, his theory of law as integrity, and his work on constitutional theory. The volume concludes with a lengthy response to the essays by Dworkin himself, which develops and clarifies many of his positions on the central questions of legal and constitutional theory. The volume represents an ideal companion for students and scholars embarking on a study of Dworkin's work.

Where Our Protection Lies

Where Our Protection Lies
Author: Dimitrios Kyritsis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199672253

In this book Dimitrios Kyritsis advances an original account of constitutional review of primary legislation for its compatibility with human rights. Key to it is the value of separation of powers. When the relationship between courts and the legislature realizes this value, it makes a stronger claim to moral legitimacy. Kyritsis steers a path between the two extremes of the sceptics and the enthusiasts. Against sceptics who claim that constitutional review is an affront to democracy he argues that it is a morally legitimate institutional option for democratic societies because it can provide an effective check on the legislature. Although the latter represents the people and should thus be given the initiative in designing government policy, it carries serious risks, which institutional design must seek to avert. Against enthusiasts he maintains that fundamental rights protection is not the exclusive province of courts but the responsibility of both the judiciary and the legislature. Although courts may sometimes be given the power to scrutinize legislation and even strike it down, if it violates human rights, they must also respect the legislature's important contribution to their joint project. Occasionally, they may even have a duty to defer to morally sub-optimal decisions, as far as rights protection is concerned. This is as it should be. Legitimacy demands less than the ideal. In turn, citizens ought to accept discounts on perfect justice for the sake of achieving a reasonably just and effective political order overall.

Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law

Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law
Author: Andrei Marmor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2011-06-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199572380

This collection brings together the best contemporary work in the area of philosophy of language and the law. The first area concerns a critical assessment of the foundational role of language in understanding the nature of law itself. The second main area concerns a number of ways in which an understanding of language can resolve some of the issues prevalent in legal interpretation, the third general topic concerns the role of language in the context of particular legal doctrines and legal solutions to practical problems.

Law and Empire

Law and Empire
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004249516

Law and Empire provides a comparative view of legal practices in Asia and Europe, from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. It relates the main principles of legal thinking in Chinese, Islamic, and European contexts to practices of lawmaking and adjudication. In particular, it shows how legal procedure and legal thinking could be used in strikingly different ways. Rulers could use law effectively as an instrument of domination; legal specialists built their identity, livelihood and social status on their knowledge of law; and non-elites exploited the range of legal fora available to them. This volume shows the relevance of legal pluralism and the social relevance of litigation for premodern power structures.

Modern Jurisprudence

Modern Jurisprudence
Author: Sean Coyle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2017-08-24
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509905634

The second edition of this book provides a concise and accessible guide to modern jurisprudence, offering an examination of the major theories as well as highlighting principal themes such as legality and justice. Together with new material, the second edition explores the historical developments and ideas that give modern thinking its distinctive shape. A key feature of the book is that readers are not simply presented with opposing theories, but are guided through the rival standpoints on the basis of a coherent line of reflection from which an overall sense of the subject can be gained. Chapters on Hart, Fuller, Rawls, Dworkin and Finnis take the reader systematically through the terrain of modern legal philosophy, tracing the issues back to fundamental questions of philosophy, and indicating lines of criticism that result in a fresh and original perspective on the subject.

Beyond Federal Dogmatics

Beyond Federal Dogmatics
Author: Stef Feyen
Publisher: Presses Universitaires de Louvain - UCL
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2013
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9058679381

Feyen rethinks the framework within which the connection between EU law and national constitutional law can be understood.

Dimensions of Dignity

Dimensions of Dignity
Author: Jacob Weinrib
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2016-09-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1316033643

In an age of constitutional revolutions and reforms, theory and practice are moving in opposite directions. As a matter of constitutional practice, human dignity has emerged in jurisdictions around the world as the organizing idea of a groundbreaking paradigm. By reconfiguring constitutional norms, institutional structures and legal doctrines, this paradigm transforms human dignity from a mere moral claim into a legal norm that persons have standing to vindicate. As a matter of constitutional theory, however, human dignity remains an enigmatic idea. Some explicate its meaning in abstraction from constitutional practice, while others confine themselves to less exalted ideas. The result is a chasm that separates constitutional practice from a theory capable of justifying its innovations and guiding its operation. By expounding the connection between human dignity and the constitutional practices that justify themselves in its light, Jacob Weinrib brings the theory and practice of constitutional law back together.

MacCormick's Scotland

MacCormick's Scotland
Author: Neil Walker
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2012-03-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0748643818

This book analyses in depth the distinctively Scottish themes in the work of Sir Neil MacCormick, the world-renowned legal philosopher and prominent Scottish public intellectual who died in 2009 after holding the Regius Chair in Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at Edinburgh University for 36 years. MacCormick's work, and works about MacCormick, attract both a domestic and an international audience. Readers will gain an understanding of how MacCormick's Scottish roots, interests and commitments coloured his work - both his distinctively Scottish writings and the overall intellectual outlook that informed his broader legal and philosophical writings.The book provides a well rounded appreciation of the Scottish dimension in MacCormick's thinking and writing. It focuses on a number of prominent Scottish themes in MacCormick's work and life and is structured around four key themes: 1) the nature and identity of a legal system; 2) sovereignty, European integration and Scottish independence; 3) the legacy of the legal and political thought of the Scottish enlightenment; and 4) the role of the academic in the Scottish public sphere.

Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire

Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire
Author: Robert Leckey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135147884

Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire uses queer theory to examine the complex interactions of law, culture, and empire. Building on recent work on empire, and taking contextual, socio-legal, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches, it studies how activists and scholars engaged in queer theory projects can unwittingly advance imperial projects and how queer theory can itself show imperial ambitions. The authors – from five continents – delve into examples drawn from Bollywood cinema to California’s 2008 marriage referendum. The chapters view a wide range of texts – from cultural productions to laws and judgments – as regulatory forces requiring scrutiny from outside Western, heterosexual privilege. This innovative collection goes beyond earlier queer legal work, engaging with recent developments, featuring case studies from India, South Africa, the US, Australasia, Eastern Europe, and embracing the frames offered by different disciplinary lenses. Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire will be of particular interest to students and researchers in the fields of socio-legal studies, comparative law, law and gender/sexuality, and law and culture.