Jurisprudence

Recent decades have witnessed a mushrooming in the range of intellectual sources and concerns contained within the broad label of legal theory. Critical legal studies, feminism and post-modernism are banners under which writers compete with those coming out of the liberal traditions of legal positivism or reinterpretations of the common law, while others express a nostalgia for natural law. In the midst of this diversity, it is difficult to retain any sense of coherence and relevance.

This challenging text reads jurisprudence as the pursuit of wisdom concerning law. It re-reads a wide selection of the material associated with the intellectual traditions comprising jurisprudence, with respect to their contribution to the intellectual imagination of the legal order, and develops a narrative in terms of the pre-modern, modernity and the onset of post-modernity. It will be an invaluable tool for the student looking for a stimulating introduction to jurisprudence and provides a highly constructive foundation from which to read many of the otherwise alluring but baffling articles currently produced. Its contextual emphasis will mean that it offers to the lecturer and other interested readers a vibrant and innovative approach in which traditional material gains a new voice and its continual relevance shines through. It will be a core text for a wide range of jurisprudential courses and a summons to further study and intellectual confrontation.