This book delineates the limits that define, and the tensions that beset, the process of conceiving how laws connect and interact with morals and facts--about the ways we do think about these connections and interactions, not about the ways we should think.

New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical legal theory which is directly concerned with the relation between law and the political. The early critical legal studies claim that all law is politics is displaced with a different and more nuanced theoretical arsenal. Combining grand theory with a concern for grounded political interventions, the various contributors to this book draw on political theorists and continental philosophers in order to engage with current (...) class='Hi'>legal problematics, such as the recent global economic crisis, the Arab spring and the emergence of biopolitics. The contributions instantiate the claim that a new and radical political legal scholarship has come into being: one which critically interrogates and intervenes in the contemporary relationship between law and power. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "The author introduces the reader to reasoning in law through the possilities, boundaries and traps of assuming personal responsibility and impersonal pattern adoption that have arisen in the history of human thought and in the various legal cultures. He discloses actual processes hidden by the veil of patterns followed in thinking, processes that we encounter both in our conceptual-logical quests for certainties and in the undertaking of fertilising ambiguity. When trying to identify (...) definitions lurking behind the human construct of facts, nitons, norms, logic, and thinking, or behind the practice of giving meanings, he discovers tradition in our presuppositions, and our world-view and moral stance in our tacit agreements. Recognising the importance of the role communication plays in shaping society, he describes our existence and institutions as self-regulating processes. Since law is a wholly social venture, we not only take part in its oeuvre with our entire personality, but are also collectively responsible for its destiny. In the final analysis, anything can be qualified as 'legal' or 'non-legal' in one or another recognised sense in which law can originate, but, as a relative totality, it can only be qualified as 'more legal' or 'less legal' in any combination of the above senses. Being formed in an uninterrupted process, neither the totality nor particular pieces of law can be taken as complete or unchangeably identical with itself. Therefore law can only be identified through its motions and computable states of 'transforming into' or 'withdrawing from' the distinctive domain of the law. Thereby both society at large and its legal professionals actually contribute to -by shaping incessantly- what presents itself as ready-to-take, according to the law's official ideology. For our initation, play, role-undertaking and human responsibility lurk behind the law's formal mask in the backstage. Or, this equals to realise that all we have become subjects from mere objects, actors from mere addressees. And despite the variety of civilisational overcoasts, the entire culture of law is still exclusively inherent in us who experience it day to day. We bear it and shape it. Everything coventional in it is convenctionalised by us. It has no further existence or effect bexond this. And with its existence inherent in us, we cannot convey the responsibility to be born for it on somebody else either. It is ours in its totality so much that it cannot be torn out of our days or acts. It will thus turn into what we guard it to become. Therefore we must take care of it at all times since we are, in many ways, taking care of our own". (shrink)

Relativistic theories and arguments are fairly common in legal thinking. A case in point is Stanley Fish's theory of interpretation, which applies to statutes and constitutions as well as to novels and poems. Fish holds, inter alia, (i) that an interpretation of a statute, a poem, or some other text can be true or valid only in light of the interpretive strategies that define an interpretive community, and (ii) that no set of interpretive strategies (and therefore no interpretation) (...) is truer or more valid than any other. In this article, I discuss these claims critically and argue that the very idea of an interpretive community is more or less unintelligible, and that in any case Fish's theory is self-refuting. I begin with a few words about the methods and techniques of statutory interpretation(Section 2). I proceed by introducing Fish's theory of interpretation, giving special consideration to some difficulties in Fish's account of the concept of an interpretive community (Sections 3-4). I then introduce two types of relativism, cognitive and moral (Section 5), and argue that Fish's theory asserts cognitive relativism in the shape of conceptual relativism and relativism about truth (Section 6). Having done that, I consider Donald Davidson's well-known objection to alternative conceptual schemes (Section 7) as well as the popular charge that relativism about truth is self-refuting (Section 8). (shrink)

In this era of globalisation, different legal systems and structures no longer operate within their own jurisdictions. The effects of decisions, policies and political developments are having an increasingly wide-reaching impact. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the sphere of European Union law. This collection of essays contributes to the co-operative search for interpretative and normative grids needed in charting the contemporary legal landscape. Written by leading lawyers and legal philosophers, they examine the effects of (...) law's de-nationalisation by placing European law in the context of transnational law and demonstrate how it forces us to rethink our basic legal concepts and propose an approach to transnational law beyond the dichotomy of national and international law. (shrink)

Reviewed work: Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Teilband 3, Recht, ed. Werner Gephart and Siegfried Hermes. Tu¨bingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2010. ISBN 978-3-16-150358-0, xxix þ 811 pp. € 299.00. Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, I/22–3.

Responsibility disappears into the background of private law as it deals with imputation of liability. Fitness to be held liable is determined by normative viewpoints different from moral ones, in particular by convictions on how society ought to be organized so as to avoid or end conflict between private citizens. Modes of discursive control are geared to making authoritative decisions in view of the same end, and corporate agency is created, restricted or enlarged to undercut or to impose individual liability.

The purpose of the study is to determine the compliance of the legislative interpretation of the concept of "traditional family values" with the cultural codes of legal consciousness that have developed to the current moment. In connection with this goal, the article examines the types of modern Russian family, taking into account the peculiarities of the mentality, cultural and religious traditions of the peoples of our country, analyzes the content of the norms of the Basic Law, as well as (...) other legislative acts of the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty lies in the application of the methodological tools of legal hermeneutics to determine the content of the concept of "traditional family values" and substantiate the conclusion that the transfer of this concept from broad social contacts to the field of professional legal thinking occurs in accordance with the formed cultural code. As a result of the analysis, the duality of the corresponding cultural code of legal consciousness is revealed. (shrink)

Essay on philosophical problems with police sting operations and the legal doctrine of entrapment.

In this monograph a fundamental distinction is made between law and juridical thinking. Law is the content of legal rules and the systems of legal rules. Juridical thinking is the handling of the law by the lawyers. To this distinction corresponds a basic distinction between the language of law and the language of juridical thinking, and correlatively, between L-concepts and J-concepts. The monograph is devoted to the J-concepts, especially of technical J-concepts. Four kinds of J-concepts (...) are investigated: morphological J-concepts, those that help us to structure the law in a logical and functional way; topological J-concepts, those that help us to indicate the phenomena to which the law is applicable, and to separate the areas of application for different legal systems; praxeological J-concepts, those that help us to explore the relations between law and action, and methodological J-concepts, those that help us to describe the methods of the professional-juridical handling of the law. The work can be characterised as presenting a lawyer ́s philosophy of law. (shrink)

We live in an age of massive efforts to transplant Western institutions. Some of those efforts have involved the so-called "Washington Consensus"; some have involved International Human Rights; but all of them have brought the West to the rest of the world, and all of them reflect a kind of missionary drive. What are the historical sources of this legal missionizing? This Article argues that those sources long predate the twentieth century, and indeed long predate the colonial adventures that (...) began in the sixteenth century. Western law was already culturally predisposed to spread well before Iberian ships reached the Americas. In particular, Western law began, in antiquity, as city-state law, and only gradually penetrated the countryside. This colonization of the countryside by the cities took place partly under the influence of Christianity. It also reflected a centrally important event in the development of Western law: the great northward shift of the center of gravity of Western culture from the Mediterranean to trans-alpine Europe, which we can roughly date to 700-1000 C.E. The long, slow internal colonization of the countryside in the West set much of the pattern for the external colonization of the non-Western world that eventually commenced in the sixteenth century. (shrink)

Praising wishful thinking is a serious risk that I am willing to run not only in this article commenting of Natalie Stoljar’s work but also elsewhere in my own scholarship. Although I will analyze her claims and will agree mostly with them, I will criticize her for stopping one step short adopting the desirability or weaker claim, when in it is not merely possible but necessary to go one step beyond arguing for the necessity or stronger claim. Accordingly, I (...) intend to present further grounds for endorsing “conceptual (legal) analysis pluralism” by distinguishing the three different inquiry or projects that are and must be integrated and stating the normative priority of one of them, i.e. the prescriptive, interpretive, and moral.Resumen:Alabar el “pensamiento ilusorio y bien intencionado” es un riesgo que estoy dispuesto a correr no solamente en este artículo para comentar el trabajo de Natalie Stoljar sino además en el resto de mi producción académica. Aun cuando voy a analizar su argumento y voy a estar de acuerdo en la mayor parte con ella, también la voy a criticar por detenerse un paso antes al adoptar la tesis de la deseabilidad o tesis débil, cuando no es meramente posible sino necesario ir un paso más allá al adoptar la tesis de la necesidad o tesis fuerte. Para tal efecto, intento presentar algunas razones adicionales para apoyar el “pluralismo del análisis (jurídico) conceptual” al distinguir las tres investigaciones o proyectos diferentes que están y deben estar integrados y establecer la prioridad normativa de uno de ellos, i.e. prescriptivo, interpretivo y moral. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the many arguments and controversies concerning abortion. While it argues for ethical and legal positions on the issues, it focuses on how to think about the issues, not just what to think about them. It is an ideal resource to improve your understanding of what people think, why they think that and whether their (and your) arguments are good or bad, and why. It's ideal for classroom use, discussion groups, organizational learning, and personal reading. (...) -/- From the Preface -/- To many people, abortion is an issue for which discussions and debates are frustrating and fruitless: it seems like no progress will ever be made towards any understanding, much less resolution or even compromise. -/- Judgments like these, however, are premature because some basic techniques from critical thinking, such as carefully defining words and testing definitions, stating the full structure of arguments so each step of the reasoning can be examined, and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of different explanations can help us make progress towards these goals. -/- When emotions run high, we sometimes need to step back and use a passion for calm, cool, critical thinking. This helps us better understand the positions and arguments of people who see things differently from us, as well as our own positions and arguments. And we can use critical thinking skills help to try to figure out which positions are best, in terms of being supported by good arguments: after all, we might have much to learn from other people, sometimes that our own views should change, for the better. -/- Here we use basic critical thinking skills to argue that abortion is typically not morally wrong. We begin with less morally-controversial claims: adults, children and babies are wrong to kill and wrong to kill, fundamentally, because they, we, are conscious, aware and have feelings. We argue that since early fetuses entirely lack these characteristics, they are not inherently wrong to kill and so most abortions are not morally wrong, since most abortions are done early in pregnancy, before consciousness and feeling develop in the fetus. -/- Furthermore, since the right to life is not the right to someone else’s body, fetuses might not have the right to the pregnant woman’s body—which she has the right to—and so she has the right to not allow the fetus use of her body. This further justifies abortion, at least, until technology allows for the removal of fetuses to other wombs. Since morally permissible actions should be legal, abortions should be legal: it is an injustice to criminalizing actions that are not wrong. -/- In the course of arguing for these claims, we: 1. discuss how to best define abortion; 2. dismiss many common “question-begging” arguments that merely assume their conclusions, instead of giving genuine reasons for them; 3. refute some often-heard “everyday arguments” about abortion, on all sides; explain why the most influential philosophical arguments against abortion are unsuccessful; 4. provide some positive arguments that at least early abortions are not wrong; 5. briefly discuss the ethics and legality of later abortions, and more. -/- This essay is not a “how to win an argument” piece or a tract or any kind of apologetics. It is not designed to help anyone “win” debates: everybody “wins” on this issue when we calmly and respectfully engage arguments with care, charity, honesty and humility. This book is merely a reasoned, systematic introduction to the issues that we hope models these skills and virtues. Its discussion should not be taken as absolute “proof” of anything: much more needs to be understood and carefully discussed—always. (shrink)

This article examines three divergent constructions about the salience of legal gender in lay people’s everyday lives and readiness to decertify gender. In our interviews (and survey data), generally participants minimised the importance of legal gender. The central argument in this article is that feminist socio-legal scholars applying legal consciousness studies to legal reform topics should find scrutinizing the construction of interview talk useful. We illustrate this argument by adapting and applying Ewick and Silbey’s (1998) (...) ‘The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life', ‘before’, ‘with’ and ‘against’ typology to interview talk about legal gender, and critique their cognitivist approach by offering a constructionist alternative. In our analysis, we offer a detailed discursive explication of three key legal consciousness themes. These themes offer a balanced representation of a dataset problematically ‘skewed’ towards sex-based rights feminist perspectives, namely that ‘before’ legal gender is an anti-decertification account, decertification would be risky for natal females; a ‘with’ legal gender construction is neither for nor against decertification per se, though the impact of decertification is produced in accounts as limited and unimportant; and ‘against’ legal gender is a pro-decertification classification, as not abolished legal gender is constructed as harmful to already marginalised groups. In concluding, we explore the reasoning for the lack of readiness for decertification currently, and return to the value of examining the construction of lay discourse about legal matters as talk is a form of social action. We suggest that applying discursive analysis to themes in legal consciousness studies enables a refocusing on the how rather than purely the what of divergent legal consciousnesses, and that this approach is a fruitful addition to feminist socio-legal studies. (shrink)

To build a relationship between Tax Administration and taxpayers based on trust, law science must provide the necessary information related to policies or institutions but also inform taxpayers about their rights and obligations. This information must be known but, above all, understood.The objective is to introduce a paradigm shift in the way legal studies are approached through Legal Design thinking techniques. Specifically, starting from the need for the jurist to study the law, collaborating with other disciplines to (...) design mechanisms that allow the communication of complex information that helps both the understanding of the law and decision-making process. (shrink)

This book re-imagines law as ecolaw. The key insight of ecological thinking, that everything is connected to everything else - at least on the earth, and possibly in the cosmos - has become a truism of contemporary theory. Taking this insight as a starting point for understanding law involves suspending theoretical certainties and boundaries. It involves suspending theory itself as a conceptual project and practicing it as an embodied and material project. Although an ecological imagining of law can be (...) metaphorical, and can be highly imaginative and suggestive, this book shows that it is also literal. Law is part of the material 'everything' that is connected to everything else. This means that once the previous certainties of legal thinking have been dismantled, it is after all possible to think of law as 'natural' - as embedded in and emergent from a normative biophysical nature. The book proposes that there exists a natural nomos: animals, plants, and Earth systems that produce their own values and norms from which human norms and laws emerge. This book, then, proposes a new way to understand law, and pursues specific arguments to demonstrate the feasibility of law as ecolaw. Drawing inspiration from current trends in the posthumanities, socio-ecological thought, and developments across the natural sciences in their specific intersections with humanities and social science disciplines, this book will appeal both to legal theorists and to others with interests in these areas. (shrink)

How does a lawyer think? Does legal intuition exist? Do lawyers need imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? It is no longer possible to answer these questions by applying philosophical analysis alone. Recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of the human mental faculties and the tools we use to solve problems. A new picture of the functioning of the legal mind is emerging. In The Legal Mind, Bartosz Brożek uses philosophical arguments (...) and insight from the cognitive sciences to depict legal thinking as a close cooperation between three cognitive mechanisms - intuition, imagination, and language - and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these mental tools. This novel and provocative approach provides a fresh perspective on legal thinking and gives rise to important questions pertaining to the limits of legal interpretation and rationality in the law. (shrink)

This is a study of what constituted legality and the role of law in ancient societies. Investigating and comparing legal codes and legal thinking of the ancient societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and of the ancient Rabbis, this volume examines how people used law to create stable societies. Starting with Hammurabi's Code, this volume also analyzes the law of the pharaohs and the codes of the ancient rabbis and of the (...) Roman Emperor Justinian. Focusing on the key concepts of justice equity and humaneness, the status of women and slaves, and the idea of criminality and of war and peace; no other book attempts to examine such diverse legal systems and legal thinking from the ancient world. (shrink)

Despite its obvious advantages, the disruptive development of neurotechnology can pose risks to fundamental freedoms. In the context of such concerns, proposals have emerged in recent years either to design human rights de novo or to update the existing ones. These new rights in the age of neurotechnology are now widely referred to as “neurorights.” In parallel, there is a considerable amount of ongoing academic work related to updating the right to freedom of thought in order to include the protection (...) of “freedom of thinking” (i.e., freedom of thought itself) and not only its social manifestations. Neurorights such as cognitive liberty, free will, mental freedom, and mental self-determination come into play here. Importantly, freedom of thought has often been considered a prerequisite for all the other fundamental freedoms and rights. In any case, just as other rights require additional legal instruments to guarantee their compliance, substantial neurorights will probably require specific complementary developments in procedural law. In relation to this, there is a long tradition of habeas corpus as an emergency remedy to enforce the rights of a citizen against illegal or arbitrary detention. More recently, the habeas data writ has been proposed and admitted in certain countries to guarantee a person’s ownership of their personal data. In this article, we propose to expand this procedural apparatus by incorporating a third habeas, which we call habeas cogitationem: a writ aimed primarily at enforcing the right to freedom of thinking (and, subsidiarily, the rest of neurorights) against direct, harmful interferences in a person’s thought process by both public and private perpetrators. (shrink)

Several aspects of the personality, thought and work of Don Vasco de Quiroga are known today, but a deeper awareness of his legal thinking would enable us to understand better the motives for his actions in New Spain and the Michoacán region. In order to do this we need to place him in the conceptual, institutional and legal context in which he was educated and where he developed throughout his life. Well versed in the different legal (...) systems in use at the time, he absorbed Roman laws, which he respected as the work of esteemed scholars, while at the same time basing his evangelical mission in Mexico on the canons of the Church. And the legal system that was to govern the villages he created according to a new model would be based on custom coming from the grassroots. (shrink)

According to long-established narratives, legal thinking in Germany, France and the U.S.A. was shaped by formalist legal cultures for the most part of the nineteenth century until the respective legal sciences embraced their social responsibility in the early twentieth century. Recently, legal historians have begun to question these narratives. In separate analyses, they have shown that the critics of ‘Legal Formalism’ exerted a lasting influence on historical research since the early twentieth century, thereby fostering (...) a deeply charged understanding of nineteenth century jurisprudence. What went largely unnoticed, however, was the transnational dimension of this false narrative. Due to the transnational ties of the critics of ‘Legal Formalism’, a powerful misrepresentation of nineteenth century Western legal thought emerged that still influences contemporary global legal history. Dismantling the prejudices surrounding the Western jurisprudence of the nineteenth century causes crucial challenges for conceptualising nineteenth century Western legal thought. (shrink)

This book proves to be an excellent guide through the labyrinth of law. Its crucial point is legal order viewed from the perspective of a situated "We". Jurisprudence appears as an implicit sort of thinking, embedded in moral, political, epistemological, and linguistic contexts. Numerous example cases lead us from everyday issues to the abysses of violence. Anyone who practices or studies law will highly profit from reading this book. One sees how law functions by being more than mere (...) law. Bernhard Waldenfels, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany Legal Thought and Philosophy clarifies background questions in legal research projects, such as the relationship between law and justice, law and politics, law and knowledge, facts and norms, normativity and validity, constituent and constitutional power, and rule and context. It provides advanced students in law and philosophy with an account of legal thinking that combines analytical and phenomenological insights. From a conception of justice as principled political self-restraint, the book explains why there are moral reasons to separate law from morality conceptually and in what sense a legal order is positive--that is, set by authority and bound up with history. The book explores the conditions under which law may become an object of knowledge and theorising, before finally discussing how these features come together in law as rule-following by citizens, officials, judges, and legislators alike. Addressing advanced students in law and philosophy, this key book: bridges separate traditions in legal philosophy (in particular analytical philosophy and phenomenology), develops a view of law as an institution of authority from a conception of justice in the socio-political relationship between we and the others, presents a systematic account of normativity and validity, explains in what sense law is doing things with rules. (shrink)

Even the thinking of professional revolutionaries progresses, as evidenced today in legal revolution. According to the German constitutional jurist, Rudolf Smend, who died in 1975, the German people suffer from a “touching need for legality.” Smend came to this conclusion not only as historian of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, but also as observer of the positivistic normativism of his own time. Recently an old and experienced Spanish revolutionary, Santiago Carrillo, put forward the same notion in (...) a book about Eurocommunism and the State. Akhough his “touching need for legality” is politically of a different nature, Carrillo is expressly convinced that die more violent mediods of Lenin's and Trotsky's illegal revolution of October 1917 are now antiquated, mat they were only justifiable in the instance of an agrarian (peasant) society breaking dirough to a modern (industrial) society. (shrink)

Recent trends in academic and professional legal communication worldwide have promoted significant changes to aim at operating successfully under current multilingual and multilegal contexts. The aim is to consider a kind of supranational legal discourse so as to minimize socio-cultural variants and to promote the pragmatic conditions for harmonized and ‘common sense’ legal practices without excluding potential reciprocal influences of or resistance to one hegemonic legal system upon others. In Brazil, the traditional ‘thinking like a (...) civil lawyer’ culture still prevails against a more global approach constraining the consolidation of the country’s role of major player in most global legal areas. In addition, the key tool required for achieving some sort of global legal status—Brazilian legal operators’ proficiency in legal English—has been barely considered in both academic and professional settings, particularly in legal translation. This study resorts to the linguistic anthropology concept of ‘entextualization’ to discuss the process of official translation in Brazil to render global legal genres. The comparative analysis between the original text in English and its official version in English focus on drafting consistency, the translator’s choice of some formal entextualization elements used in the process of translation and his/her authority as the entextualizing agent to legitimate text. (shrink)

What is "critical thinking"? -- What is "law"? : thinking critically about legal perspectives -- Putting critical thinking into legal practice -- Thinking critically about assessments -- Thinking critically in the workplace and beyond.

Dahlman analyzes the case with a version of Bayes’ rule that can handle dependencies. He claims that his method can help a fact finder avoid various kinds of bias in probabilistic reasoning, and he identifies occurrences of these biases in the analyzed decision. While a mathematical analysis may give a false impression of objectivity to fact finders, Dahlman claims as a benefit that it forces to make assumptions explicit, which can then be scrutinized.

Like many recent works in legal theory, especially those focusing on the apparently conflicting schools of legal positivism and natural law, Waluchow’s Inclusive Legal Positivism begins by admitting a degree of perplexity about the field; indeed, he suggests that the field has fallen into “chaos”. Disturbingly, those working within legal theory appear most uncertain about what the tasks of their field are. Legal philosophers often seem to suspect strongly that at least their colleagues in the (...) field are confused about those tasks. As a result, many recent books in legal theory are in large part exercises in legal metatheory, devoting many pages to attempts to define the purposes and goals of the field. Waluchow follows this trend and begins by expressing a desire to clarify the issues that separate those trying to give an account of the nature of law. His ultimate goal is to defend a version of legal positivism, inclusive legal positivism, that he thinks is at least implicit in H. L. A. Hart’s work. (shrink)

In Legal Pragmatism, Michael Sullivan looks closely at the place of the individual and community in democratic society. After mapping out a brief history of American legal thinking regarding rights, from communitarianism to liberalism, Sullivan gives a rich and nuanced account of how pragmatism worked to resolve conflicts of self-interest and community well-being. Sullivan’s view of pragmatism provides a comprehensive framework for understanding democracy, as well as issues such as health care, education, gay marriage, and illegal immigration (...) that will determine its character in the future. Legal Pragmatism is a bold, carefully argued book that presents a unique understanding of contemporary society, law, and politics. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human discourse and a crucial force in shaping our social reality. From mundane squabbles about matters of taste to high-stakes disputes about law and public policy, the way we express and navigate disagreement plays a central role in both our personal and political lives. Legal discourse, in particular, is rife with disagreement - it is the very bread and butter of courtroom argument and legal scholarship alike. Consider a debate between two (...) class='Hi'>legal philosophers, Ronald and Herbert, about the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Ronald asserts: ‘It is the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. In response, Herbert states: ‘It is not the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. We intuitively think Ronald and Herbert are disagreeing, which reveals in the fact that they are licensed to use ex¬pressions like no (it isn’t) and nuh-uh when responding to their opponent’s claim. But despite the ubiquity and significance of legal disagreement, its precise nature remains elusive. This chapter discusses what exactly is going on when two people disagree about what the law requires, and how can hybrid theory may answer this question. (shrink)

This book discusses how Plato, one the fiercest legal critics in ancient Greece, became – in the longue durée – its most influential legislator. Making use of a vast scholarly literature, and offering original readings of a number of dialogues, it argues that the need for legal critique and the desire for legal permanence set the long arc of Plato’s corpus—from the Apology to the Laws. Modern philosophers and legal historians have tended to overlook the fact (...) that Plato was the most prolific legislator in ancient Greece. In the pages of his Republic and Laws, he drafted more than 700 statutes. This is more legal material than can be credited to the archetypal Greek legislators—Lycurgus, Draco, and Solon. The status of Plato’s laws is unique, since he composed them for purely hypothetical cities. And remarkably, he introduced this new genre by writing hard-hitting critiques of the Greek ideal of the sovereignty of law. Writing in the milieu in which immutable divine law vied for the first time with volatile democratic law, Plato rejected both sources of law, and sought to derive his laws from what he called ‘political technique’. At the core of this technique is the question of how the idea of justice relates to legal and institutional change. Filled with sharp observations and bold claims, Platonic Legislations shows that it is possible to see Plato—and our own legal culture—in a new light “In this provocative, intelligent, and elegant work D. L. Dusenbury has posed crucial questions not only as regards Plato’s thought in the making, but also as regards our contemporaneity.”—Giorgio Camassa, University of Udine “There is a tension in Greek law, and in Greek legal thinking, between an understanding of law as unchangeable and authoritative, and a recognition that formal rules are often insufficient for the interpretation of reality, and need to be constantly revised to match it. Dusenbury’s book illuminates the sophistication of Plato’s legal thought in its engagement with this tension, and explores the potential of Plato’s reflection for modern legal theory.”—Mirko Canevaro, The University of Edinburgh. (shrink)

The author discusses the role of language within law, and the role of philosophy of language in understanding the nature of law. He argues that the major re-thinking of the common and `common sense' views about law that have been proposed by various recent legal theorists are unnecessary.