Jurisprudence

Theory and Context is aimed at students new to the study of legal philosophy. At the same time, it offers new ideas and perspectives that will be of interest to established scholars. The first part of the book offers a brief overview of the role and method of legal philosophy. The second part introduces important individual theorists of the nature of law - H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Lon Fuller, John Finnis, and Hans Kelsen - while also discussing the schools of thought (e.g., legal positivism and natural law theory) they represent. Common and recurrent themes are discussed in the third from broad-ranging topics such as justice, punishment, and statutory interpretation, to the questions raised about the intersection of law and morality, to analytical questions regarding rights. This section also includes a novel analysis of how many legal theories can be better understood by considering their relative dependence on either "will" or "reason." The fourth section introduces the modern, critical approaches that have dominated recent jurisprudential legal realism, law and economics, critical legal studies, feminism, critical race theory, law and literature, pragmatism, and postmodernism. The second edition includes many new topics (including Justice, Punishment, Common Law Reasoning and Precedent, Law and Literature, Pragmatism and Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Public Choice Theory) as well as updated and expanded material from the first edition.