Author: Kunal M. Parker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521519953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
This book argues for a change in our understanding of the relationships among law, politics, and history. Since the turn of the nineteenth century, a certain anti-foundational conception of history has served to undermine law's foundations, such that we tend to think of law as nothing other than a species of politics. Thus viewed, the activity of unelected, common law judges appears to be an encroachment on the space of democracy. However, Kunal M. Parker shows that the world of the nineteenth century looked rather different. Democracy was itself constrained by a sense that history possessed a logic, meaning, and direction that democracy could not contravene. In such a world, far from law being seen in opposition to democracy, it was possible to argue that law - specifically, the common law - did a better job than democracy of guiding America along history's path.
Author: Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0029328802
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
"Law in Modern Society" is a comparative study of the place of law in societies as well as a criticism of social theory. Under what conditions do different kinds of law emerge? What are the bases of the rule of law ideal that marks advanced liberal, capitalist societies? What can the study of law teach us about social hierarchy and moral vision in these societies, and, indeed, about the specificity of Western civilization? Why do we find it necessary to struggle for the rule of law and impossible to achieve it? What political possibilities are closed or opened by present-day changes in the established styles of legality and legal thought? Unger deals with these questions in a broad range of historical settings. But he also relates them to the central issues of social theory: the method of explanation, the conditions of social order, and the nature of 'modern' society. the book argues that to resolve its own internal dilemmas the science of society must once again become both metaphysical and political.
Author: Thomas J. McSweeney
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198845456
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This book examines the development of legal professionalism in the early English common law, with specific reference to the 13th-century treatise known as Bracton and to its likely authors.
Author: Mary Arden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198755848
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Law is a lasting social institution, but it must also be responsive to change. In this volume Mary Arden draws upon her experience to examine how judge-made law adapts to the evolving demands of society, how law reform works in practice, and the future of the judiciary in our diverse modern culture.
Author: Christopher W. Brooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139475290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469
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Book Description
Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law was essentially the creation of the wider community, it challenges many current assumptions and opens new perspectives about how early-modern society should be understood. Its magisterial scope and lucid exposition will make it essential reading for those interested in subjects ranging from high politics and constitutional theory to the history of the family, as well as the history of law.
Author: William Edward Nelson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820315877
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
Americanization of the Common Law remains one of the standard works on the transformation of law in America from the late colonial period to the end of the early republic. In a straightforward manner, William E. Nelson analyzes the profound ideological movement that grew out of the American Revolution and caused substantial structural change in the legal and social order of Massachusetts and, by extension, in the nation at large. The Revolution, Nelson argues, transformed a hierarchical and communitarian legal and social order into an egalitarian and individualistic one. For this edition, Nelson has written a new preface in which he discusses the book's initial reception and the relevant historiographical issues that have arisen since it was first published in 1975.
Author: Reza Banakar
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781409407393
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
This collection offers a snapshot of how rights are debated and employed in public discourse to reshape legal and political relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They explore how rights are used to challenge the state of affairs by indiv
Author: David A. Strauss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199703698
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that the theory of an evolving, "living" Constitution effectively "rendered the Constitution useless." He wanted a "dead Constitution," he joked, arguing it must be interpreted as the framers originally understood it. In The Living Constitution, leading constitutional scholar David Strauss forcefully argues against the claims of Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and other "originalists," explaining in clear, jargon-free English how the Constitution can sensibly evolve, without falling into the anything-goes flexibility caricatured by opponents. The living Constitution is not an out-of-touch liberal theory, Strauss further shows, but a mainstream tradition of American jurisprudence--a common-law approach to the Constitution, rooted in the written document but also based on precedent. Each generation has contributed precedents that guide and confine judicial rulings, yet allow us to meet the demands of today, not force us to follow the commands of the long-dead Founders. Strauss explores how judicial decisions adapted the Constitution's text (and contradicted original intent) to produce some of our most profound accomplishments: the end of racial segregation, the expansion of women's rights, and the freedom of speech. By contrast, originalism suffers from fatal flaws: the impossibility of truly divining original intent, the difficulty of adapting eighteenth-century understandings to the modern world, and the pointlessness of chaining ourselves to decisions made centuries ago. David Strauss is one of our leading authorities on Constitutional law--one with practical knowledge as well, having served as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States and argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. Now he offers a profound new understanding of how the Constitution can remain vital to life in the twenty-first century.
Author: W. Friedmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520345355
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
Author: Jerome Frank
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 135150956X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Law and the Modern Mind first appeared in 1930 when, in the words of Judge Charles E. Clark, it "fell like a bomb on the legal world." In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the delusion that the law is a bastion of predictable and logical action. Jerome Frank's controversial thesis is that the decisions made by judge and jury are determined to an enormous extent by powerful, concealed, and highly idiosyncratic psychological prejudices that these decision-makers bring to the courtroom.
