Living Law

This collection of essays is the first edited volume in the English language which is entirely dedicated to the work of Eugen Ehrlich. Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922) was an eminent Austrian legal theorist and professor of Roman law. He is considered by many as one of the 'founding fathers' of modern sociology of law. Although the importance of his work (including his concept of 'living law') is widely recognised, Ehrlich has not yet received the serious international attention he deserves. Therefore, this collection of essays is aimed at 'reconsidering' Eugen Ehrlich by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of leading international experts to discuss both the historical and theoretical context of his work and its relevance for contemporary law and society scholarship. This book has been divided into four parts. Part I of this volume paints a lively picture of the Bukowina, in southeastern Europe, where Ehrlich was born in 1862. Moreover it considers the political and academic atmosphere at the end of the nineteenth century. Part II discusses the main concepts and ideas of Ehrlich's sociology of law and considers the reception of Ehrlich's work in the German speaking world, in the United States and in Japan. Part III of this volume is concerned with the work of Ehrlich in relation to that of some his contemporaries, including Roscoe Pound, Hans Kelsen and Cornelis van Vollenhoven. Part IV focuses on the relevance of Ehrlich's work for current socio-legal studies. This volume provides both an introduction to the important and innovative scholarship of Eugen Ehrlich as well as a starting point for further reading and discussion.

This highly original work demonstrates the fundamental role of customary law for the realization of Indigenous peoples’ human rights and for sound national and international legal governance. The book reviews the legal status of customary law and its relationship with positive and natural law from the time of Plato up to the present. It examines its growing recognition in constitutional and international law and its dependence on and at times strained relationship with human rights law. The author analyzes the role of customary law in tribal, national and international governance of Indigenous peoples’ lands, resources and cultural heritage. He explores the challenges and opportunities for its recognition by courts and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, including issues of proof of law and conflicts between customary practices and human rights. He throws light on the richness inherent in legal diversity and key principles of customary law and their influence in legal practice and on emerging notions of intercultural equity and justice. He concludes that Indigenous peoples’ rights to their customary legal regimes and states’ obligations to respect and recognize customary law, in order to secure their human rights, are principles of international customary law, and as such binding on all states. At a time when the self-determination, land, resources and cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples are increasingly under threat, this accessible book presents the key issues for both legal and non-legal scholars, practitioners, students of human rights and environmental justice, and Indigenous peoples themselves.

"Well, clearly, and articulately written, Living Letters of the Law is among the most important books in medieval European history generally, as well as in its particular field."—Edward Peters, author of The First Crusade

Science has defined a variety of natural laws that explain the physical world and how it changes. One such law states that for every action there is a reaction, and that for every motion there is corresponding counter-motion. Whether it’s visible to the human eye or not, one thing is certain – movement and change will occur as a result. Having studied these principles, author Raymond Holliwell not only understood the universal physical applications, he also understood the spiritual and mental applications as well. By using this law on a spiritual and mental level, Holliwell found that a specific thought could create a desired reaction in his personal and professional life through continual and dedicated practice. As he came to realize the expanded potential of this powerful law, he eventually recognized the ultimate source of the dramatic results – God.

Written with the intent of creating an entry-level, simple to read report concerning the core principles of the Law of One and Confederation philosophy in general, this book takes the reader through a discussion of Law of One principles such as unity, free will, love, light and polarity. It then works with the Confederation version of the concept that each person has an energy body with seven chakras. It discusses this concept and its implications for the seeker, chakra by chakra. It turns the player into a Player! This is a light-hearted book about the Game of Life. It is an easy read, and yet the principles of the Law of One are not simplified. Rather, they are offered in an order which makes coherent sense. Principle builds upon principle to offer an overall view of Confederation philosophy which is a bit easier to grasp as a whole than the original Law of One books, where the question-and-answer format offers the same information in a somewhat fragmented form, although with endless interest. If you would like to play the Game of Life with Carla, please give this book a try!

Living Law presents a comprehensive overview of relationships between legal and social theory, and of current approaches to the sociological study of legal ideas. It explores the nature of legal theory and sociolegal studies today as teaching and research fields, and the work of many of the major sociolegal theorists. In addition, it sets out the author's distinctive approach to sociological analysis of law, applying this in a range of studies in specific legal fields, such as the law of contract, property and trusts, constitutional analysis, and comparative law.

It is often assumed that modern democratic government has a special link with Christianity or was made possible due to Christianity. As a challenge to this belief and echoing a long-held assumption in the republican tradition, Hannah Arendt once remarked that "Washington's and Napoleon's heroes were named Moses and David." In this book, Miguel Vatter reconstructs the political theology of German Jewish philosophers during the twentieth century and their attempts to bring together the Biblical teachings on politics with the Greek and Roman traditions of political philosophy. Developed alongside modern experiences with anti-Semitism, the rise of Zionism, and the return of charismatic authority in mass societies, Jewish political theology in the twentieth century advances the radical hypothesis that the messianic idea of God's Kingdom correlates with a post-sovereignty, anarchist political condition of non-domination. Importantly, Jewish philosophers combined this messianic form of democracy with the ideal of cosmopolitan constitutionalism, which is itself based on the identity of divine law and natural law. This book examines the paradoxical unity of anarchy and rule of law in the democratic political theology developed by Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Critical of the Christian theological underpinnings of modern representative political institutions, this group of highly original thinkers took up the banner of Philo's project to unify Greek philosophy with Judaism, and rejected the separation between faith and reason, as well as the division between Biblical revelation and pagan philosophy. The Jewish political theology they developed stands for the idea that human redemption is inseparable from the redemption of nature. Living Law offers an alternative genealogy of political theology that challenges the widespread belief that modern republican political thought is derived from Christian sources.

This book offers a radical new understanding of law, beyond the confines of its formalization by the state. The book takes off from the late work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, for whom law and its institutions came to be liberated from an ideological perspective that had treated them as sterile instruments for the reproduction of domination. Engaging its continental history, it addresses the concept of law, not merely as a ‘command’, but as the result of a much more complex legal operation aimed at dynamically stabilizing the social relations of a community. The book thus sidesteps the usual legal-political focus on those – from Hobbes to Schmitt – who have contributed to the categorical scheme of the modern state, and with it questions of political representation, sovereignty, the rigid distinction between public law and private law, and so on, as it pursues an alternative theoretical trajectory through Ravaisson, Tarde, and Hauriou. Politics, the book maintains, can be no longer be treated simply through the state form. And, relatedly, the law must be seen as a living law: a law that cannot be treated exclusively in formal terms, but must be taken as a grammar capable of articulating a politics of process, relationality, and innovation. Reconceived as such, law can then circumvent the aporias that arise when society is viewed as a private company, and the state seen as the bearer of the only possible means of formalizing its relationships. At the intersection of law and political theory, this book will speak to scholars and others with interests in both these areas, and especially those concerned with the limits of both conventional and critical approaches to law.