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The Politics of the Common Law offers a critical introduction to the legal system of England and Wales. Unlike other conventional accounts, this revised and updated second edition presents a coherent argument, organised around the central claim that contemporary postcolonial common law must be understood as an articulation of human rights and open justice. The book examines the impact of the European Convention and European Union law on the structures and ideologies of the common law and engages with the politics of the rule of law. These themes are read into normative accounts of civil and criminal procedure that stress the importance of due process. The final sections of the book address the reality of civil and criminal procedure in the light of recent civil unrest in the UK and the growing privatisation of public services. The book questions whether it is possible to find a balance between the requirements of economics and the demands of justice.
Law and Aesthetics draws on the work of poets as well as philosophers. Taking as its starting point Shelleys assertion that poets are unacknowledged legislators,the book suggests that there is a way of thinking that, as yet, has not been taken up by those who make use of literary aesthetics to understand law. The book tracks this aesthetic thinking through the failures of critical legal studies and stages an encounter with psychoanalysis, before suggesting that an aesthetics of law can be exhumed from Nietzsches work. The aesthetic is a call to the creative: fashion new law. A review of contemporary legal theory that makes use of aesthetic perspectives suggests that dissident and radical Nietzschean energies continue to animate legal thought. In the final chapter, an aesthetics of law is shown to make for an interruption of legal categories, and the generation of new legal relationships. The book concludes with a further meditation on Shelleys poetry, and a call to continue in the spirit of aesthetic reinvention.
Justice as Welfare links equality, justice and welfare at the philosophical level, to propose an egalitarian view of social justice.
Jurisprudence is the prudence of jus, law's consciousness and conscience. Throughout history, when thinkers wanted to contemplate the organisation of society or the relationship between authority and the subject, they turned to law. All great philosophers, from Plato to Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber had either studied the law or had a deep understanding of legal operations. But jurisprudence is also the conscience of law, the exploration of law's justice and of an ideal law or equity at the bar of which state law is always judged. Jurisprudence brings together 'is' and 'ought', the positive and the normative, law and justice. But after a long process of decay, legal theory is today cha...
Linking critical legal thinking to constitutional scholarship and a practical tradition of US lawyering that is orientated around anti-poverty activism, this book offers an original, revisionist account of contemporary jurisprudence, legal theory and legal activism. The book argues that we need to think in terms of a much broader inheritance for critical legal thinking that derives from the social ethics of the progressive era, new left understandings of "creative democracy" and radical theology. To this end, it puts jurisprudence and legal theory in touch with recent scholarship on the American left and, indeed, with attempts to recover the legacies of progressive era thinking, the civil rights struggle and the Great Society. Focusing on the theory and practice of poverty law in the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the present day, the book argues that at the heart of both critical and liberal thinking is an understanding of the lawyer as an ethical actor: inspired by faith or politics to appreciate the potential and limits of law in the struggle against economic inequality.
The essays brought together in Islam, Law and Identity are the product of a series of interdisciplinary workshops that brought together scholars from a plethora of countries. Funded by the British Academy the workshops convened over a period of two years in London, Cairo and Izmir. The workshops and the ensuing papers focus on recent debates about the nature of sacred and secular law and most engage case studies from specific countries including Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Pakistan and the UK. Islam, Law and Identity also addresses broader and over-arching concerns about relationships between religion, human rights, law and modernity. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empiri...
To understand globalized law it is necessary to bring together insights gained from disparate strands of study: international political economy, economic law, human rights law, and the law of war. Focusing on WTO, the UN, the World Bank, and the IMF, Globalization and Law shows how their legal and regulatory regimes are linked to the politics of world markets. It also looks at the operation of law and economy at a national level where globalized law can be seen in action. Chapters consider the politics of oil and human rights in Nigeria, and the invasion and 'reconstruction' of Iraq. Other broad themes are also examined. Looking at the fate of people in the third world who are the subjects of economic development and development law, we can bring to light the power relationships and ideologies that are attendant on the development project. In conclusion, it is argued that we need to engage with the claims to humanity that lie behind the notion of human rights, the war against terrorism and military intervention. Globalized law raises fraught questions about the role of international regimes and the interests and values in whose name they claim to operate.
In Law and the Visual, leading legal theorists, art historians, and critics come together to present new work examining the intersection between legal and visual discourses. Proceeding chronologically, the volume offers leading analyses of the juncture between legal and visual culture as witnessed from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Editor Desmond Manderson provides a contextual introduction that draws out and articulates three central themes: visual representations of the law, visual technologies in the law, and aesthetic critiques of law. A ground breaking contribution to an increasingly vibrant field of inquiry, Law and the Visual will inform the debate on the relationship between legal and visual culture for years to come.
Providing the basis for critical engagement with the pessimism of the contemporary age, The Degradation of the International Legal Order? argues passionately for a rehabilitation of the honour of historic events and processes, and of their role in generating legal concepts. Drawing primarily from the Marxian tradition, but also engaging with a range of contemporary work in critical theory and critical legal and human rights scholarship, this book analyses historical and recent international events and processes in order to challenge their orthodox interpretation. What is thus proposed is a new evaluation of international legal principles and human rights norms, the revolutionary content of which, it is argued, turns them from mere rhetoric into powerful weapons of struggle. Accessibly written, but theoretically sophisticated, this original and timely book is intended for critical teachers and students of international law, human rights, and international relations, as well as legal and political activists.
The contributions presented in this volume are the result of research activities and interdisciplinary encounters organised by the Nordic Network of Law and Literature. They focus on current discussions on justice in a Nordic and European context. By expanding the focus to justice and humanities – beyond "law and literature" – the authors intend to not only cover law and literature in a traditional (narrow) sense, but to embrace different perspectives closely linked to the research and debate about law and literature, e.g., in cultural studies. The volume specifically deals with four main themes, each of which is described and analysed from different angles, by a scholar with a background in the humanities and a scholar with a legal background (or lawyer), respectively: Law and Humanities – the Road Ahead; History, Memory and Human Rights; Forgiveness and Law; Justice, Culture and Copyright.