Legal Theory And The Legal Academy

The third in a series of three volumes on Contemporary Legal Theory, this volume deals with four topics: 1) the role of legal theory in the legal curriculum; 2) the teaching of legal theory; 3) the relationship of legal theory to legal scholarship; and 4) the relationship of legal theory to comparative law. The focus of the first two topics is on the common law world, where the debates over the aims and proper place of legal theory in the study of law have traversed a good deal of ground since John Austin's 1828 lecture, 'The Uses and the Study of Jurisprudence.' These first two parts offer a selection of the most important papers, including surveys, as well as pedagogical viewpoints and particular course descriptions from analytical, critical, feminist, law-and-literature and global perspectives. The last three decades have seen just as many changes for legal scholarship and comparative law. These changes (such as the rise of empirical legal scholarship) have often attracted the attention of legal theorists. Within comparative law, the last thirty years have witnessed intense methodological reflection within the discipline; the results of these reflections are themselves properly recognised as legal theoretical contributions. The volume collects the key papers, including those by Neil MacCormick, Mark Van Hoecke, Andrew Halpin, William Ewald and Geoffrey Samuel.

In Western culture, law is dominated by textual representation. Lawyers, academics and law students live and work in a textual world where the written word is law and law is interpreted largely within written and printed discourse. Is it possible, however, to understand and learn law differently? Could modes of knowing, feeling, memory and expectation commonly present in the Arts enable a deeper understanding of law's discourse and practice? If so, how might that work for students, lawyers and academics in the classroom, and in continuing professional development? Bringing together scholars, legal practitioners internationally from the fields of legal education, legal theory, theatre, architecture, visual and movement arts, this book is evidence of how the Arts can powerfully revitalize the theory and practice of legal education. Through discussion of theory and practice in the humanities and Arts, linked to practical examples of radical interventions, the chapters reveal how the Arts can transform educational practice and our view of its place in legal practice. Available in enhanced electronic format, the book complements The Moral Imagination and the Legal Life, also published by Ashgate.

In Western culture, law is dominated by textual representation. Lawyers, academics and law students live and work in a textual world where the written word is law and law is interpreted largely within written and printed discourse. Is it possible, however, to understand and learn law differently? Could modes of knowing, feeling, memory and expectation commonly present in the Arts enable a deeper understanding of law's discourse and practice? If so, how might that work for students, lawyers and academics in the classroom, and in continuing professional development? Bringing together scholars, legal practitioners internationally from the fields of legal education, legal theory, theatre, architecture, visual and movement arts, this book is evidence of how the Arts can powerfully revitalize the theory and practice of legal education. Through discussion of theory and practice in the humanities and Arts, linked to practical examples of radical interventions, the chapters reveal how the Arts can transform educational practice and our view of its place in legal practice. Available in enhanced electronic format, the book complements The Moral Imagination and the Legal Life, also published by Ashgate.

This book grew out of the conviction that the original concepts of the Poznań School of Legal Theory are still perfectly suited for application today, in the era of moral pluralism and multicentric legal systems. Moreover, since we are in the midst of a period of heated disputes over the grounds of the normativity of law, and are confronting controversies about the basis for the legitimacy of court decisions, over the results of legal interpretation, and concerning the coherence of legal systems, it would seem that the legal-theoretical proposals put forward by the circle of Poznań legal theorists, supported as they are by firm methodological foundations, have not by any means lost their value.

In the past fifteen years there has been a marked increase in the international scholarship relating to women in law. The lives and careers of women in legal practice and the judiciary have been extensively documented and critiqued, but the central conundrum remains: Does the presence of women make a difference? What has been largely overlooked in the literature is the position of women in the legal academy, although central to the changing culture. To remedy the oversight, an international network of scholars embarked on a comparative study, which resulted in this path-breaking book. The contributors uncover fascinating accounts of the careers of the academic pioneers as well as exploring broader theoretical issues relating to gender and culture. The provocative question as to whether the presence of women makes a difference informs each contribution.

Who, or what, is a 'person' according to the law? How did this understanding of personhood come about? In the twenty-first century, environmentalism, animal rights, artificial intelligence, and corporate personhood have compelled us to consider these questions once again. Legal personhood is a foundational concept of Western legal thought and A Theory of Legal Personhood seeks to go beyond contemporary debates, challenging our very understanding of legal personhood itself. Drawing on extensive research, scholarship, legislation, and court cases from around the globe, this book offers readers — with or without previous knowledge — new insights into legal personhood. It scrutinizes how personhood came to be understood synonymously with the holding of legal rights. It then posits that a better understanding of legal personhood is as a cluster property. Finally, it applies this new theory to explain and structure the numerous debates surrounding legal personhood.

The book focuses on the relationship between law and politics as perceived by the legal community and more specifically, the transformation of politics into law. After exploring the relationship between law and politics as considered by the major modern schools of legal theory, the focus moves to the regions of interaction in which law and politics meet, termed the "policy of law." The policy of law is characterized in this work as the stage of the law-making process at which values entrenched in political decisions are transformed into legal concepts in order to fit the existing legal system. The space labeled as policy of law is today mainly (but not exclusively) the domain of legal actors. Consequently, the identification of a branch of the legal discipline specifically devoted to the investigation of the transformations of values into law is given: the policy of law analysis. Finally, whether and to what extent the policy of law analysis can be encompassed within the traditional legal discipline and, more particularly, as a part of jurisprudence, is explored. "Zamboni ranges broadly and knowledgeably over vast areas of legal theory. But it is no mere taxonomising - his argument is valuable and original. It is clear, learned and never boring." [Zenon Bankowski, University of Edinburgh].

Recent political science research into the American legal academy has been ‘captured by conservatism’—this research has framed the institutional and ideological developments occurring within the law schools over the past forty years solely through the prism of modern conservatism. As a result, political scientists have ignored the political struggles of one of the most important legal reform movements of the 1980s and overlooked the hope for leftist reform that existed within American law schools during this period. Critical Legal Studies and the Campaign for American Law Schools tells the story of the critical legal studies movement. This formidable movement sought to fundamentally reconstruct law schools, train a new generation of leftist lawyers, and replace the dominant form of legal consciousness governing the American legal system. Instead of projecting a fatalism onto leftist reform, this book relies on extensive archival research and interviews to illuminate the radical potential that lived in the American legal academy of the 1980s. The critical legal studies movement was a towering presence in the law schools, and its legacy continues to hold out political possibilities and reform lessons for leftist legal scholars today.