Law Culture And Values

This festschrift, in honor of the work of Gray L. Dorsey, covers their major areas of his lifelong commitment to the culture and jurisprudence of law in an historical and comparative, East-West context. Within his normative framework, Dorsey took account of the crisis in positivism, Marxism, and alternative conceptions of value in the law. His work emphasized intercultural conflicts in a societal and global environment without surrendering the sense of western culture and its special contributions to legal and moral thought. The volume, originally prepared as a special issue of the Washington University Law Quarterly, has the benefit of an urbane new opening essay by Professor Vojcanin, which seeks to show how jurisculture is a "treasure map one may use to unearth the holes in which justice was hidden." It also contains a special essay by Gray Dorsey to conclude the volume in which he offers his current views on the philosophy of law and social theory in general. The volume is vigorous in its analysis, and central to any serious appraisal of the status of the philosophy of international law at this stage in history. The essays by Abraham Edel, Elizabeth Flower, Harold J. Berman, and Iredell Jenkins give special attention to this theme. The chapters by Jerome Hall, Herbert H.P. Ma, and Thomas H. Fang each take up a central issue in the relationship of world religion to world law. A third set of papers--by Edward McWhinney, Palitha T.B. Kohona, and Jacob W.F. Sundberg, discuss the major sociological implications of Dorsey's type of legal theory--with figures from Karl Marx, Max Weber, and F.S.C. Northrop covered in detail. For three decades, Gray L. Dorsey has contributed to comparative legal systems, emphasizing through his novel method of reasoning--jurisculture--a synthesis of empirical investigation and legal reasoning. Dorsey's work focuses on a set of meanings derived without reference to observed events, but by the adaptation and use of fundamental beliefs to organize and govern human cooperation. Gray L. Dorsey is Charles Nagel Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence at International Law at Washington University Law School in St. Louis. He is the author of, among other works, Beyond the United States: Changing Discourse in International Politics and Law, and Jurisculture--the first two volumes, on Greece and Rome, and on India and China are now published by Transaction Publishers--with an additional five volumes remaining to complete this massive project. He is a past president of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.

Law as Culture is a beguilingly accessible, lively and engaging introduction to the law and to legal skills, complete with innovative skills exercises and even some cartoons. It gives the reader a framework for subsequent legal study and for professional life by demystifying the language and culture of the law and by building legal skills. The Extracts, Preface to the 2nd edn and Skills Inventory (below, link above), clearly outline the many strengths of this edition. The book shows how law students are socialised into professional legal culture, and encourages independent thought. It highlights the ways in which law reflects social values and priorities, the place of law as one among many systems of social organisation and problem-solving, and the rise of lawyers as a subculture. This edition has been extensively revised to take account of developments in law such as the results of the 1999 Referendum on the Republic, the debates about a Bill of Rights for Australia, and changes to legal professional practice. The jurisdictional reach has been extended to look at cases and legislation from all Australian States. Black/White relations has been introduced as a recurring theme - materials on Aboriginal Reconciliation, the Wik judgment and the legal and political debate over the Stolen Generations give continuity and perspective. Law as Culture includes clear and accessible accounts of key jurisprudential issues and an extended introduction which sets out the pedagogical assumptions. There are cases and legislation from all Australian States, thorough referencing, and an annotated list of Further Reading in each chapter.

This book presents a distinctive approach to the study of law in society, focusing on the sociological interpretation of legal ideas. It surveys the development of connections between legal studies and social theory and locates its approach in relation to sociolegal studies on the one hand and legal philosophy on the other. It is suggested that the concept of law must be re-considered. Law has to be seen today not just as the law of the nation state, or international law that links nation states, but also as transnational law in many forms. A legal pluralist approach is not just a matter of redefining law in legal theory; it also recognizes that law's authority comes from a plurality of diverse, sometimes conflicting, social sources. The book suggests that the social environment in which law operates must also be rethought, with many implications for comparative legal studies. The nature and boundaries of culture become important problems, while the concept of multiculturalism points to the cultural diversity of populations and to problems of fragmentation, or perhaps to new kinds of unity of the social. Theories of globalization raise a host of issues about the integrity of societies and about the need to understand social networks and forces that extend beyond the political societies of nation states. Through a range of specific studies, closely interrelated and building on each other, the book seeks to integrate the sociology of law with other kinds of legal analysis and engages directly with current juristic debates in legal theory and comparative law.

This volume addresses the pluralistic identity of the legal order. It argues that the mutual reflexivity of the different ways society perceives law and law perceives society eclipses the unique formal identity of written law. It advances a distinctive approach to the plural ways in which legal cultures work in a modern society, through the metaphor of the mirror. As a mirror of society, it distinguishes between the structure and function of legal culture within the legal system, and the external representation of law in society. This duality is further problematized in relation to the increasing transnationalisation of law. Based on a multi-level interpretation of the concept of legal culture, the work is divided into three parts: the first addresses the mutual reflections of social and legal norms that support a pluralist representation of internal legal cultures, the second concentrates on the external legal cultures that constantly enable pragmatic adjustments of the legal order to its social environment, and the third concludes the book with a theoretical discussion of the issues presented.

Unfulfilled legal needs are at a tipping point in much of the Canadian justice system. The Justice Crisis assesses what is and isn’t working in efforts to strengthen a fundamental right of democratic citizenship: access to civil and family justice. Contributors to this wide-ranging overview of recent empirical research address key issues: the extent and cost of unmet legal needs; the role of public funding; connections between legal and social exclusion among vulnerable populations; the value of new legal pathways; the provision of justice services beyond the courts and lawyers; and the need for a culture change within the justice system.

Evocative and stimulating, engaging and timely, this small volume makes sense of the complicated and reciprocal relationship between law and culture. It starts with various definitions of law and the factors that anthropologists consider when they compare legal systems. Next, the experiences of exemplary researchers throughout history and some of the methods they used in their discoveries are discussed. Readers learn how to employ the comparative method and build a typology based on the source of a particular law by putting the world’s legal system into one of three categories: Western law, religious law, and traditional law. The book also tackles important issues such as formal law versus informal law, using law to legitimize power, and clashing values within a single legal system. Examples from fieldwork experiences and historical events offer readers a chance to see how a method has been applied or a concept developed—as well as how law and culture are intertwined in the real world.

"Oscar G. Chase studies the American legal system in the manner of an anthropologist. By comparing American 'dispute ways' with those of other systems, including some commonly believed to be more 'primitive, ' he finds interesting similarities that challenge the premise that we live in a society regulated by a rational and just 'rule of law.'" --New York Law Journal"A witty and engaging endeavor. . . . A good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must reading." --Law and Politics Book Review"After reading Law, Culture, and Ritual, no one could ever again think that our legal proceedings are nothing more than an efficient method of discovering truth and applying law. Oscar Chase effectively uses a comparative approach to help us to step back from our legal practices and see just how steeped in myths, rituals and traditions they are. Scholars will want to read this book for its contribution to comparative law, but everyone interested in American culture should read this book. Chase shows us that there is no separating law from culture: each informs and maintains the other. Law, Culture, and Ritual is a major step forward in the rapidly expanding field of the cultural study of law." --Paul Kahn, author of The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship"Having allowed ourselves to be convinced (wrongly) that we are the most litigious people in the world, Americans have become obsessed with finding (quick) cures. Oscar Chase's book sounds a salutary warning. By presenting striking comparative examples that shatter our parochialism, he forces us to examine the cultural roots of dispute processes." --Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA LawSchoolDisputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate - they originate and mutate in respons

Divided into three parts, this book examines the relationship between law and culture from various perspectives, both theoretical and empirical. Part I outlines the framework for further considerations and includes new, innovative conceptualizations of two ideas that are essential to the topic of law and culture: legal culture and customary law. Both of these reappear later in the more empirically oriented chapters of Parts II and III. Part II includes chapters on the relationships between law, customs, and culture, drawing heavily on the tradition and achievements of the anthropology of law and touching on important problems of multiculturalism, legal pluralism, and cultural defense. It focuses on the more intangible meaning of culture, while Part III addresses its more material, tangible aspects and the issue of cultural production, as well as its intersection with law.