Philosophers and Law – serie

This work brings together a collection of essays on the contemporary relevance of, and outstanding issues in, Hegel’s legal theory. Particular attention is paid to the different parts of the legal curriculum which Hegelian analysis could contribute to in a positive manner.

In the course of articulating his monumental theory of political justification, Thomas Hobbes developed a sustained and detailed approach to law and legal questions. Unfortunately legal philosophers have largely ignored Hobbes' remarks on law, and philosophers have only begun to explore it. This collection aims to spur interest in Hobbes' legal philosophy, by collecting the best recent philosophical writings on Hobbes' views on law. The essays address questions such as whether Hobbes was a positivist, a natural law theorist or neither. They also address Hobbes' treatment of natural law, his account of equity, as well as his more specific views on topics like contract, punishment, self-defense, civil disobedience, and international law. The essays collected here provide an excellent survey of the various legal questions Hobbes addressed.

Wittgenstein is described in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy as 'the leading analytical philosopher of the twentieth century, whose two major works altered the course of the subject'. This exceptional reference volume highlights and explores the extensive influence of Wittgenstein's work on contemporary legal philosophy.

Immanuel Kant's legal philosophy and theory have played an enormous role in the development of law since the eighteenth century. Although this influence can be seen primarily in German law and in the law of nations which have traditionally been oriented toward German legal development, today Kant's philosophy has experienced a Renaissance in the Anglo-American legal world. This anthology collects what the editors believe to be the very best of articles on Kant's legal theory, with an emphasis on his Metaphysics of Morals of 1797. In particular the articles relate to: 1) the nature of law and justice, 2) private law, 3) public law, 4) criminal law, 5) international law, and 6) cosmopolitan law.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau stands as one of the most influential figures in the history of philosophy. His masterpiece-The Social Contract-has had a profound effect on legal and political theorists ever since its appearance. Rousseau and Law presents for the first time in one collection the most important contemporary work exploring his many contributions to legal theory. These essays deal with a variety of issues, such as social contract theories, democratic rights, fundamental law, natural law and natural rights, affinities between Rousseau and Dworkin's legal theories, narrative, bioethics, and promise enforcement.

This audacious collection of modern writings on Plato and the Law argues that Plato's work offers insights for resolving modern jurisprudential problems. Plato's dialogues, in this modern interpretation, reveal that knowledge of the functions of law, based upon intelligible principles, can be reformulated for relevance to our age. Leading interpreters of Plato: Vlastos, Hall, Strauss, Weinrib, Annas, and Morrow, are included in the collection. The editor supplies an insightful introduction and extensive bibiography to the collection.

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is especially relevant for law, which is grounded in the interpretation of authoritative texts from the past to resolve present-day disputes. In this collection, leading scholars consider the importance of Gadamer’s philosophy for ongoing disputes in legal theory. The work of prominent philosophers, including Fred Dallmayr, P. Christopher Smith and David Hoy, is joined with the work of leading legal theorists, such as William Eskridge, Lawrence Solum and Dennis Patterson, to provide an overview of the connections between law and Gadamer’s hermeneutical philosophy. Part I considers the relevance of Gadamer’s philosophy to longstanding disputes in legal theory such as the debate over originalism, the rule of law and proper modes of statutory and constitutional exegesis. Part II demonstrates Gadamer’s significance for legal theory by comparing his approach to the work of Nietzsche, Habermas and Dworkin.

Legal scholars have only recently begun to address the radical challenges for law and legal theory that follow from Friedrich Nietzsche's pathbreaking work. This collection brings together articles from leading thinkers who consider how Nietzsche's philosophical and rhetorical interventions illuminate the failures of contemporary legal theory. Part One considers the connections between law, political philosophy and Nietzsche's genealogy. Part Two provides a number of competing interpretations of Nietzsche's relevance for legal hermeneutics. Part Three includes articles that chart a course for legal critique that remains true to Nietzsche's radical character. The work of prominent philosophers, including P. Christopher Smith, is joined with the work of leading legal theorists, including Philippe Nonet and leading rhetoricians, including Marianne Constable, to provide complex and sophisticated overview of the manner in which Nietzsche problematizes law and legal theory.

John Locke is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy. His Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration fascinate us as much today as they did when first published three centuries ago. Locke and Law presents for the first time in one collection the most important contemporary writings exploring his many contributions to legal theory. These articles and essays deal with a variety of issues, such as natural law, natural rights, property, abortion, constitutional law, the relationship between law and society, punishment, toleration, and civil disobedience.

Cicero and Modern Law contains the best modern writings on Cicero's major law related works, such as the Republic, On Law, On Oratory, along with a comprehensive bibliography of writings on Cicero's legal works. These works are organized to reveal the influence of Cicero's writings upon the history of legal thought, including St. Thomas, the Renaissance, Montesquieu and the U.S. Founding Fathers. Finally, the articles include discussions of Cicero's influence upon central themes in modern lega thought, including legal skepticism, republicanism, mixed government, private property, natural law, conservatism and rhetoric. The editor offers an extensive introduction, placing these articles in the context of an overall view of Cicero's contribution to modern legal thinking.

This collection of classic articles affirms Marx's continuing relevance to modern debates on the role of law. The issues addressed include the implications of Marx's analysis of law for understanding the form and functions of law, justice and injustice, the critique of liberal legalism, the ideological nature of law, international human rights law, crime and punishment. The legacy of Marx's work is reassessed in the context of recent historical changes.

There has been a huge upsurge in Hume research over the past thirty years. However, one area that has not received its due share of attention is David Hume's legal thought where the research has been fragmented and often un-championed. This volume - the first collection of essays in English to focus on Hume's legal ideas - celebrates the diversity of Hume's contributions to jurisprudence. Topics are as varied as legal causation, theories of punishment and of property, contract, and legal obligation. Hume's notorious assertion of the artificiality of justice is discussed and the articles are supplemented by a bibliography of law-related articles on Hume. The juxtaposing of these topics brings out the - often unappreciated - coherence of the theory that underlies them, anchoring law firmly in Hume's overall epistemology and empiricist methodology. Hume's key insight that law and legal institutions develop contextually but naturally from conventions, driven by the human condition, is a particularly modern one. And it is one, as these essays reveal, that opens up a huge potential for further research - by philosophers, social scientists, and jurists.

This volume gathers together sixteen seminal articles, all written by leading scholars, which articulate and effectuate the influence of Derrida's scholarship on the field of law. The articles included in this collection are underpinned by the authors' shared belief that the intellectual challenges posed by Derrida's work to legal scholarship are as challenging as they are pressing and as profound as they are inescapable. In addition to a thorough introduction addressing salient aspects of Jacques Derrida's engagement with law, this book comes with an extensive bibliography of sources in English. This provides the reader with a carefully selected list of more than one hundred texts, all of which serve as introductory pathways to Derrida's philosophy and in particular to the interaction between Derrida and law. A fine reminder of the trans-disciplinary influence of Jacques Derrida's thought, this landmark collection is destined to generate substantial interest in philosophy departments and law schools alike.

Few thinkers can have had a more diverse or a more contested impact on theorizing law than Michel Foucault. This diversity is reflected in the wide range of Foucault's work and of the intellectual fields it has so conspicuously influenced. Such diversity informs the present collection and is signalled in the headings of its four sections: Epistemologies: archaeology, discourse, Orientalism Political philosophy: discipline, governmentality and the genealogy of law Embodiment, difference, sexuality and the law The subject of rights and ethics. Whilst the published work selected for this collection amply accommodates this diversity, it also draws together strands in Foucault's work that coalesce in seemingly conflicting theories of law. Yet the editors are also committed to showing how that very conflict goes to constitute for Foucault an integral and radical theory of law. This theory ranges not just beyond the restrained and diminished conceptions of law usually derived from Foucault, but also beyond the characteristic concern in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy to constitute law in its difference and separation from other socio-political forms.

St. Augustine and Roman law are the two bridges from Athens and Jerusalem to the world of modern law. Augustine's almost eerily modern political realism was based upon his deep appreciation of human evil, arising from his insights into the human personality, the product of his reflections on his own life and the history of his times. These insights have traveled well through the ages and are mirrored in the pages of Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt. The articles in this volume describe the life and world of Augustine and the ways in which he conceived both justice and law. They also discuss the little recognized Augustinian contributions to the field of modern hermeneutics - the discipline which informs the art of legal interpretation. Finally, they include Augustine's valuable discussion of church/state relations, the law of just wars, and proper role and limits of coercion, and the procreative dimensions of marriage. The volume also includes an extremely useful, definitive bibliography of Augustine and the law, and will leave readers with an increased appreciation of the contributions which Augustine has made to the history of jurisprudence. No one can read Augustine and these articles on his view of the law without taking away a new view of the law itself.

John Locke is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy. His Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration fascinate us as much today as they did when first published three centuries ago. Locke and Law presents for the first time in one collection the most important contemporary writings exploring his many contributions to legal theory. These articles and essays deal with a variety of issues, such as natural law, natural rights, property, abortion, constitutional law, the relationship between law and society, punishment, toleration, and civil disobedience.

St. Augustine and Roman law are the two bridges from Athens and Jerusalem to the world of modern law. Augustine's almost eerily modern political realism was based upon his deep appreciation of human evil, arising from his insights into the human personality, the product of his reflections on his own life and the history of his times. These insights have traveled well through the ages and are mirrored in the pages of Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt. The articles in this volume describe the life and world of Augustine and the ways in which he conceived both justice and law. They also discuss the little recognized Augustinian contributions to the field of modern hermeneutics - the discipline which informs the art of legal interpretation. Finally, they include Augustine's valuable discussion of church/state relations, the law of just wars, and proper role and limits of coercion, and the procreative dimensions of marriage. The volume also includes an extremely useful, definitive bibliography of Augustine and the law, and will leave readers with an increased appreciation of the contributions which Augustine has made to the history of jurisprudence. No one can read Augustine and these articles on his view of the law without taking away a new view of the law itself.

This volume collects some of the best recent writings on St. Thomas’s philosophy of law and includes a critical examination of Aquinas’s theory of the relation between law and morality, his natural law theory, as well as the modern reformulation of his approach to natural rights. The volume shows how Aquinas understood the importance of positive law and demonstrates the modern relevance of his writings by including Thomistic critiques of modern jurisprudence and examples of applications of Thomistic jurisprudence to specific modern legal problems such as federalism, environmental policy, abortion and euthanasia. The volume also features an introduction which places Aquinas’s writings in the context of modern jurisprudence as well as an extensive bibliography. The volume is suited to the needs of jurisprudence scholars, teachers and students and is an essential resource for all law libraries.

The essays collected for this volume represent the best scholarly literature on Hugo Grotius available in the English language. In the English speaking world Grotius is not as well known as his fellow 17th century political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, but in legal theory Grotius is at least as important. Even on central political concepts such as liberty and property, Grotius has important views that should be explored by anyone working in legal and political philosophy. And Grotius’s work, especially De Jure Belli ac Pacis, is much more important in international law and the laws of war than anyone else’s work in the 17th or 18th centuries. This volume is therefore useful not only to Grotius scholars, but also to anyone interested in historical and modern debates on key issues in political and legal philosophy more broadly, and international law in particular.

The essays selected for this volume highlight the contributions of Adam Smith to our understanding of law and jurisprudence. The collection provides a detailed and overarching analysis of Smith’s work related to law and shows how Smith connected jurisprudence to moral philosophy and to economics. In this regard, the volume is unique and stands out in comparison to the many books which explore Smith’s contributions to economics. Contributions to this volume form the core of an essential research collection on Adam Smith and law by reproducing key works of scholarship in a form that permits the user to authoritatively cite the original publications; maintaining the original pagination and references.

This collection of articles brings together a selection of previously published work on Agamben’s thought in relation to law and gathered from within the legal field and theory in particular. The volume offers an exemplary range of varied readings, reflections and approaches which are of interest to readers, students and researchers of Agamben’s law-related work.

This volume introduces and collects some of the leading articles on noted economist and philosopher Amartya Sen’s contributions to law and jurisprudence. While Sen has not contributed explicitly to the discipline of law, his scholarship has inspired significant investigations of core jurisprudential subjects. With the publication of The Idea of Justice in 2009, Sen has contributed many notable ideas to important concepts of jurisprudence, challenging notions of universalism and institutionalism in jurisprudential concepts, and contributing his own ideas on justice and equality. He offers fresh insights on the content of democracy and enumerates what good decision making in different contexts might entail. He has written importantly on issues of identity and cosmopolitanism, demonstrating the complexity of modern ideas of diversity, fairness and most importantly, sensitivity to context in assessing policies and governmental strategies. This curated collection of essays seeks to explore what other scholars have made of Sen’s contributions to law and jurisprudence and the achievement of justice at both local and global levels. It includes an introductory essay that provides an overview of Sen’s corpus of work and sorts, defines and explains the issues that are explored more fully in the 14 essays that follow. Those essays engage with different aspect of Sen’s work, addressing his influence on political theory; jurisprudence; law with applications to constitutional theory and adjudication; deliberative democracy; political participation and decision making; human rights; labour law; law and development; gender justice; economic and political development and measurements; and assessment and theories of individual, collective and global justice.

This volume collects some of the best writings on Spinoza’s philosophy of law and includes a critical examination of Spinoza’s theory of the types of law, his natural law theory, as well as the modern reformulation of his approach to the nature of laws and to natural rights. This collection of essays (some of which are published in the English language for the very first time) shows how Spinoza was able to deliver a revolutionary idea of natural law that breaks away from the traditions of natural law and of legal positivism. The bulk of Spinoza’s references to law derive from his metaphysical and political texts, but they have sufficient depth in order to form a groundbreaking theory of law that has been somewhat neglected by modern jurisprudence. The volume also features an introduction which places Spinoza’s writings in the context of modern jurisprudence as well as an extensive bibliography. It is suited to the needs of jurisprudence scholars, teachers and students and is an essential resource for all law libraries; it is also essential to anybody who wishes to engage in Spinoza studies nowadays, whose practical philosophy has received a recent boom in attention by readers throughout the world.

The essays selected for this volume demonstrate the importance of law - conceptually, normatively and practically - to a proper understanding of Hannah Arendt’s work. Though Arendt herself was not a lawyer, and lacked any legal training, it is remarkable that in each of her guises law plays an often subtle, at times idiosyncratic, but unavoidably vital role. For example, as a journalist, confronting the evil of Adolf Eichmann; or as an essayist, engaged with emerging democracies in the East or their unravelling in the West; or as a political thinker concerned to celebrate and secure the conditions for political action; or as a philosopher, reflecting on man’s capacity for judgement. Although Arendt herself never wrote systematically about law her rich insights in this field have been studied closely by scholars and this collection marks the first attempt to gather that work, and to understand it thematically. In so doing, the editors seek to open a dual dialogue: inviting Arendt scholars to uncover what Arendt had to say about law, and legal scholars to evaluate her contribution to the field of law.

The essays collected in this volume reflect the profound impact of Martha Nussbaum’s philosophical writings on law and legal scholarship. The capabilities approach that she has largely authored has influenced the approach scholars take to the law of disabilities, both in the United States and in Canada, as well as to international human rights and to domestic private law’s protections of vulnerable populations. Her analyses of the relationship between our emotions and our thought and action has triggered a re-assessment of the legal regulation and recognition of emotion in a range of fields, most particularly in the field of criminal law; and her writing on the nature of dignity has informed an understanding of the emerging civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens worldwide. Our appreciation of the role of narrative in legal thought and discourse and the contributions of literature to law and legal culture, have also been broadened and deepened by her contributions. Taken together, and including the introduction by the editor, the essays collected in this volume demonstrate the far-reaching impact of Nussbaum’s philosophical oeuvre.