The Functions of Law

The Functions of Law
Author: Kenneth M. Ehrenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199677476

This book seeks to contribute to a legal positivist picture of law by defending two metaphysical claims about law and investigating their methodological implications. One claim is that the law is a kind of artifact, a thoroughgoing human creation for performing certain tasks or accomplishing certain goals. That is, artifacts are generally understood in terms of their functions. When discussing artifacts, the notion of function need not be as mysterious or problematic as might be the case with biological functions. The other claim is that the law is an institution, a specific kind of artifact that creates artificial roles which allow for the establishment and manipulation of rights and duties among those subject to the institution. The methodological implication of this picture of law is that it is best understood in terms of the social functions that it performs and that the job of the legal philosopher is to investigate those functions. This position is advanced against non-positivist theories of law that nonetheless rely upon notions of law's function, and is also advanced against positivist pictures that tend to de-emphasize or overlook the central role that function must play to understand the nature of law. One key implication of this picture is that it can help explain how law might give people reasons to act beyond its use of force to do.

Law and the Social Sciences

Law and the Social Sciences
Author: Julius Stone
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 129
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452910669

Law and the Social Sciences was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The author, a distinguished authority on law, provides an illuminating and challenging discussion of the social aspects of law and legal problems. As a background to some penetrating observations, he takes stock of the contributions and interrelations of the bodies of knowledge, from both the juristic and the social science side, which bear upon the study of law at the present time. He is concerned to show the respects in which jurisprudential ideas in this area have been stimulated and clarified by work in the social sciences, and, conversely, to draw attention to the need for the increased interest of social scientists in this area to take account of juristic insights, many of them of long standing. He points out some of the dangers, not limited to waste of effort, arising from "parochialism" on the part of either the lawyer or the social scientist. The final section is devoted to a study of the contributions, potentialities, and limits of behavioralist and computer techniques in understanding and operating the appellate judicial process. The book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author as the William S. Pattee Memorial Lectures sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School.

Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function

Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function
Author: James Coolidge Carter
Publisher: Beard Books
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2000-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1587980126

This series of lectures were prepared by the author for delivery at Harvard University Law School, but he died before he had the opportunity to present them. They are an illuminating and thought-provoking exposition of the nature of law and legislation, expounding on the differences between the written and unwritten law. The entire field of human conduct is explored, starting with conduct and its regulation in primitive society. The exposition commences with the search for the answer to the question: What is law? It ventures into the areas of government and politics.