This title was first published in 2001. After languishing for decades in the domains of rigid doctrinalism and confusing theory, the conflict of laws is increasingly being recognized as an important area of law to a global community. To demonstrate its importance, Michael Whincop and Mary Keyes transcend the divide between the English pragmatic tradition and the circularity of American policy-based theory. They argue that the law governing multistage conflicts can minimize the social costs of litigation, increase the extent of co-ordination, facilitate private ordering and limit regulatory monopolies and cross-border spillovers. Pragmatic in outlook and economic in methodology, they pursue these themes across a broad range of doctrinal issues and offer valuable links to parallel analyses in domestic contexts.

Pragmatism is experiencing a resurgence in law, philosophy and social science, with pragmatists seeking a consistent, comprehensive and productive understanding of social life. In its four sections Renascent Pragmatism aids the reinvigoration of pragmatism as an important intellectual tradition and contributor to inquiry and change in social life. The book is a first of its kind for combining essays on theory, method, public policy and empirical scholarship, presenting contributions from philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists. Throughout the book, the concrete linkage between policy, theory and method is emphasized, while recognizing the philosophical tradition in which the inquiries and prescriptions rest.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress enacted a vast body of legislation to protect the environment and individual health and safety. Collectively, this legislation is known as “risk regulation” because it addresses the risk of harm that technology creates for individuals and the environment. In the last two decades, this legislation has come under increasing attack by critics who employ utilitarian philosophy and cost-benefit analysis. The defenders of this body of risk regulation, by contrast, have lacked a similar unifying theory. In this book, the authors propose that the American tradition of philosophical pragmatism fills this vacuum. They argue that pragmatism offers a better method for conceiving of and implementing risk regulation than the economic paradigm favored by its critics. While pragmatism offers a methodology in support of risk regulation as it was originally conceived, it also offers a perspective from which this legislation can be held up to critical appraisal. The authors employ pragmatism to support risk regulation, but pragmatism also leads them to agree with some of the criticisms against it, and even to level new criticisms of their own. In the end, the authors reject the picture—painted by risk regulation’s critics—of widely excessive and irrational regulation, but the pragmatic perspective also leads them to propose a number of recommendations for useful reforms to risk regulation.

1. Pragmatism: Philosophical versus everyday. 2. Legal pragmatism. 3. John Dewey on Democracy and law. 4. Two concepts of democracy. 5. Democracy defended. 6. The concepts applied.

In Legal Pragmatism, Michael Sullivan looks closely at the place of the individual and community in democratic society. After mapping out a brief history of American legal thinking regarding rights, from communitarianism to liberalism, Sullivan gives a rich and nuanced account of how pragmatism worked to resolve conflicts of self-interest and community well-being. Sullivan's view of pragmatism provides a comprehensive framework for understanding democracy, as well as issues such as health care, education, gay marriage, and illegal immigration that will determine its character in the future. Legal Pragmatism is a bold, carefully argued book that presents a unique understanding of contemporary society, law, and politics.

"A most timely contribution that provokes important reflections, whatever one's perspective on the rule of law or the limits of international law. This book deserves to be read widely in the United States and, even more so, beyond its shores, to understand the politics of pragmatism."---Philippe Sands, University College London --