Challenges to Legal Theory offers the reader a fascinating journey through a variety of multi-disciplinary topics, ranging from law and literature, and law and religion, to legal philosophy and constitutional law. The collection reflects some of the challenges that the field of legal theory currently faces. It is compiled by a selection of international and Spanish scholars, whose essays are made available in English translation for the first time. The volume is based on a collection of essays, published in Spanish, in honour of Professor José Iturmendi Morales, of Complutense University, Madrid, and brings the rich scholarship of pre-eminent Spanish scholars of law and legal theory to an international audience.

The book is a collection of essays, which aim to situate African legal theory in the context of the myriad of contemporary global challenges; from the prevalence of war to the misery of poverty and disease to the crises of the environment. Apart from being problems that have an indelible African mark on them, a common theme that runs throughout the essays in this book is that African legal theory has been excluded, under-explored or under-theorised in the search for solutions to such contemporary problems. The essays make a modest attempt to reverse this trend. The contributors investigate and introduce readers to the key issues, questions, concepts, impulses and problems that underpin the idea of African legal theory. They outline the potential offered by African legal theory and open up its key concepts and impulses for critical scrutiny. This is done in order to develop a better understanding of the extent to which African legal theory can contribute to discourses seeking to address some of the challenges that confront African and non-African societies alike.

The third in a series of three volumes on Contemporary Legal Theory, this volume deals with four topics: 1) the role of legal theory in the legal curriculum; 2) the teaching of legal theory; 3) the relationship of legal theory to legal scholarship; and 4) the relationship of legal theory to comparative law. The focus of the first two topics is on the common law world, where the debates over the aims and proper place of legal theory in the study of law have traversed a good deal of ground since John Austin's 1828 lecture, 'The Uses and the Study of Jurisprudence.' These first two parts offer a selection of the most important papers, including surveys, as well as pedagogical viewpoints and particular course descriptions from analytical, critical, feminist, law-and-literature and global perspectives. The last three decades have seen just as many changes for legal scholarship and comparative law. These changes (such as the rise of empirical legal scholarship) have often attracted the attention of legal theorists. Within comparative law, the last thirty years have witnessed intense methodological reflection within the discipline; the results of these reflections are themselves properly recognised as legal theoretical contributions. The volume collects the key papers, including those by Neil MacCormick, Mark Van Hoecke, Andrew Halpin, William Ewald and Geoffrey Samuel.

The text makes the case for a revival of general jurisprudence in response to globalisation.

Exploring the intricate and multi-dimensional conception of clarity and obscurity in law, this volume presents and examines the most recent research and theories. It provides practical guidance on how to avoid obscurity in legal drafting, as well as legal interpretation at both the national and international levels.