Details
- Debunks the claims of neutrality long associated with the school of analytical jurisprudence.
- Sketches an alternative pragmatic jurisprudence that is uncompromising in its commitment to democratic ideals.
- Shows how legal theory is inextricably bound up with moral and political values and must recognize its own political setting and responsibilities.
The Province of Jurisprudence Democratized explores the implications of taking a vigorously democratic approach to issues of traditional legal theory. Allan C. Hutchinson introduces the democratic vision and examines the complementary philosophy of a Dewey-inspired pragmatism. This is followed by an examination from a pragmatic perspective of the dominant theories of analytical jurisprudence in both their positivist and naturalist forms. He emphasizes the contested concepts of 'truth', 'facts' and 'law/morality relation' and explores what a more uncompromising democratic/pragmatic agenda for law and legal theory would entail.
The Author's intent is to contribute to the shift away from a technical and elite philosophical approach to jurisprudence to a more democratic engagement. It advances and follows through on the critical claim that there is no position of theoretical or political innocence. Like the law it seeks to illuminate, legal theory must recognize its own political and social setting as well as its own responsibilities. Moreover, whatever else democracy might entail or imply, it opposes elite rule whether by autocrats, functionaries or theorists, however enlightened or principled their proposals or interventions may be: authority must come from below, not above.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Democracy and Legal Theory
Chapter 2. The Austinian Tradition Determined
Chapter 3. Valuing Positivism
Chapter 4. Law and Morality Revisited
Chapter 5. A Powerful Turn
Chapter 6. Toward a Democratized Province
Chapter 7. Conclusion: The Proper and the Improper
Index
Allan C. Hutchinson was recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada and is Distinguished Research Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and was also a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School in the Fall 2007. Hutchinson is a legal theorist with an international reputation for his original and provocative writings. As well as publishing in most of the common-law world's leading law journals, he has written or edited many books including Evolution and the Common Law (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Companies We Keep: Corporate Governance and Democracy (Irwin Law, 2005).
"The strength of this book lies not just in Hutchinson's intellectual engagement with and careful deconstruction of, the variants of the analytical tradition which continue to dominate jurisprudence and to haunt and limit legal theory and practice, but in his unswerving commitment to a progressive, sociologically informed and politically engaged democratic vision." - David Fraser, Journal of Law and Society, Volume 36, No.3, 2009
"...this book confirms and deepens Hutchinson's fundamental, but never naive, belief in the possibilities of democracy and the flourishing of a politically engaged and active citizenry...The strength of this book lies not just in Hutchinson's intellectual engagement with and careful deconstruction of, the variants of the analytical tradition which continue to dominate jurisprudence and to haunt and limit legal theory and practice, but in his unswerving commitment to a progressive, sociologically informed and politically engaged democratic vision" - David Fraser, Nottingham University
