Jurisprudence Themes and Concepts

Jurisprudence: Themes and Concepts takes an innovative approach to the study of jurisprudence. Drawing together a range of specialists making original contributions, it provides a summary, analysis and critique of basic themes in, and major contributions to, the study of jurisprudence.
The book explores issues and ideas in jurisprudence in a way that integrates them with legal study more broadly, avoiding the tendency in recent years for the subject to become overly inward-looking, specialist and technical.
Since the approach taken is an interdisciplinary one, it also makes connections with contemporary issues in political and social theory – such as changing conceptions of sovereignty, globalisation, the role of rights, and the relationship of other forms of power to the legal realm – in order to situate current jurisprudential debates.
The book is divided into three parts: Law and Politics, Legal Reasoning, and Law and Modernity. Its coverage is therefore broad and links legal, political, philosophical and social analysis to wider contemporary concerns with which the study of jurisprudence should be engaged.

Emilios Christodoulidis is a Reader in Law at the University of Edinburgh. Lindsay Farmer is Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow. Scott Veitch is Professor of Jurisprudence and the University of Hong Kong

Part I: Law and Politics. General Themes. 1.1. Introduction to the Relationship between Law and Politics. 1.2 Sovereignty. 1.3 The Rule of Law. 1.4 The ‘Inner morality of law’. 1.5 Rights. Advanced Topics. 2.1 The Rule of Law and the State of Emergency. 2.2 Sovereignty and Globalisation. 2.3 Problems of the Rule of Law in Political Transitions. 2.4 Legalism and Legality. 2.5 Citizenship. Tutorials. Part II Legal Reasoning. General Themes. 1.1 Introduction to Legal Reasoning. 1.2 Legal Formalism, Legal Realism, and the Open Texture of Law. 1.3 Three Theories of Legal Reasoning: An Extended Formalism – MacCormick; Principles, Interpretation and Integrity – Dworkin; Critical Legal Analysis - Unger. Advanced Topics. 2.1 Justice, natural law and the limits of rule following. 2.2 Equality, difference and domination. 2.3 Judging in an unjust society. 2.4 Prejudice and discrimination. Tutorials. Part III Law and Modernity. General themes. 1.1 What is legal modernity? 1.2 Formal legal rationality and its institutions. 1.3 Dilemmas of modern law: materialisation of formal law and the law of the welfare state. 1.4 Law after modernity. Advanced Topics. 2.1 Juridification. 2.2 Legitimation and Ideology. 2.3 Law, Power and Discipline. 2.4 Legal Pluralism. 2.5 Law and Reconciliation. Tutorials