Keith Culver – författare

English-speaking jurisprudence of the last 100 years has devoted considerable attention to questions of identity and continuity. H.L.A. Hart, Joseph Raz, and many others have sought means to identify and distinguish legal from non-legal social situations, and to explain the enduring legality of those typically dynamic social situations. Focus on characterization of legality associated with the state, the most prominent legal phenomena available, has led to an analytical approach dominated by the idea of legal system and analysis of its constituent norms. Yet as far back as Hart's 1961 encounter with international law, the system-focussed approach to legality has experienced moments of self-doubt. From international law to the new legal order of the European Union, to shared governance and overlapping jurisdiction in transboundary areas, what at least appear to be instances of legality are at best weakly explained by approaches which presume the centrality of legal system as the mark and measure of social situations fully worthy of the title of legality. What next, as phenomena threaten to outstrip theory? Legality's Borders: An Essay in General Jurisprudence explains the rudiments of an inter-institutional theory of law, a theory which finds legality in the interaction between legal institutions, whose legality we characterise in terms of the kinds of norms they use rather than their content or system-membership. Prominent forms of legality such as the law-state and international law are then explained as particular forms of complex agglomeration of legal institutions, varying in form and complexity rather than sheer legality. This approach enables a fundamental shift in approach to the problems of identity and continuity of characteristically legal situations in social life: once legality is decoupled from legal system, the patterns of intense mutual reference amongst the legal institutions of the law-state can be seen as one justifiably prominent form of legality amongst others including overlapping forms of legality such as the European Union. Identity over time, on this view, is less a fixed set of characteristics than a history of intense mutual interaction of legal institutions, comparable against similar other agglomerations of legal institutions.

Analytical jurisprudence often proceeds with two key assumptions: that all law is either contained in or traceable back to an authorizing law-state, and that states are stable and in full control of the borders of their legal systems. What would a general theory of law be like and do if these long-standing presumptions were loosened? The Unsteady State aims to assess the possibilities by enacting a relational approach to explanation of law, exploring law's relations to the environment, security, and technology. The account provided here offers a rich and renewed perspective on the preconditions and continuity of legal order in systemic and non-systemic forms, and further supports the view that the state remains prominent yet is now less dominant in the normative lives of norm-subjects and as an object of legal theory.

Analytical jurisprudence often proceeds with two key assumptions: that all law is either contained in or traceable back to an authorizing law-state, and that states are stable and in full control of the borders of their legal systems. What would a general theory of law be like and do if these long-standing presumptions were loosened? The Unsteady State aims to assess the possibilities by enacting a relational approach to explanation of law, exploring law's relations to the environment, security, and technology. The account provided here offers a rich and renewed perspective on the preconditions and continuity of legal order in systemic and non-systemic forms, and further supports the view that the state remains prominent yet is now less dominant in the normative lives of norm-subjects and as an object of legal theory.

Keith Culver and David Castle Introduction Aquaculture is at the leading edge of a surprisingly polarized debate about the way we produce our food. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, aquaculture production has increased 8. 8% per year since 1970, far surpassing productivity gains in terrestrial meat production at 2. 8% in the same period (FAO 2007). Like the ‘green revolution’ before it, the ‘blue revolution’ in aquaculture promises rapidly increased productivity through technology-driven - tensi?cation of aquaculture animal and plant production (Costa-Pierce 2002; The Economist 2003). Proponents of further aquaculture development emphasize aq- culture’s ancient origins and potential to contribute to global food security d- ing an unprecedented collapse in global ?sheries (World Fish Center; Meyers and Worm 2003; Worm et al. 2006). For them, technology-driven intensi?cation is an - dinary and unremarkable extension of past practice. Opponents counter with images of marine and freshwater environments devastated by intensive aquaculture pr- tices producing unsustainable and unhealthy food products. They view the promised revolutionasascam,nothingmorethanclever marketingbypro?t-hungry ?shfa- ers looking for ways to distract the public from the real harms done by aquaculture. The stark contrast between proponents and opponents of modern aquaculture recalls decades of disputes about intensive terrestrial plant and animal agriculture, disputes whose vigor shows that the debate is about much more than food production (Ruse and Castle 2002).