Critical Jurisprudence The Political Philosophy of Justice

Author: Costa Douzinas; Adam Gearey
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781841134529
Published In: September 2005
Format: Paperback , 388 pages
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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This new text is essential reading for anyone seeking an alternative account of the jurisprudential tradition. Provocative, engaging and insightful, Critical Jurisprudence challenges the reader to question dominant readings of the law, tracing a tradition of critical thought that has always haunted the orthodoxy.

Part text book, part user's manual, the work departs from the usual debates that dominate jurisprudence. Its key thesis is that the entire jurisprudential tradition needs to be re-assessed. The book offers an exploration of the work of philosophers and social and political theorists whose work has not traditionally been seen as jurisprudential

Offering an introduction and interpretation of thought that has been criticised or dismissed as obscure, the book argues that law has always been at the heart of philosophy and social theory, but that it is necessary to expand the jurisprudential canon; to take the subject out of its self imposed ghetto, and to open dialogues between traditions seen as irreconcilable. This allows a radical rethinking of the nature of rights, justice, sovereignty and other foundational concepts. Law's complicity with political oppression, violence and racism has to be faced before it is possible to speak of a new beginning for legal thought, which in turn is the necessary precondition for a theory of justice.

Contents:: Part 1: ;Introductions; 1 From Restricted to General Jurisprudence; 2 Law’s Others: Poststructuralism and Law; Part 2: Classical Jurisprudence; 3 Natural Law, Resistance and Utopia; 4 Justice: A Short History of (a Long) Failure; 5 England’s Dreaming: The Spirits of Positivism; 6 Manuscript Found in a Bottle: Notes Towards a Theory of Judgement; Part 3: Philosophical Differences; 7 The Colour of Law: Identity, Recognition, Rights; 8 Letter to a Wound: Marxism, Justice and the Social Order; Part 4: Critical Jurisprudence; 9 News from Nowhere: Anxiety, Critical Legal Studies and Critical ‘Tradition(s)’; 10 White Law, Black Power: Racism, Resistance and Critical Jurisprudence; 11 At the Stroke of Midnight . . .: Postcolonial Jurisprudence; Part 5: Aesthetic Jurisprudence; 12 Psychoanalysis Becomes the Law; 13 The Lion for Real: Law and the Demands of Literature; Index

Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of London.
Adam Gearey is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck College, University of London.