Tom Campbell is well known for his distinctive contributions to legal and political philosophy over three decades. In emphasizing the moral and political importance of taking a positivist approach to law and rights, he has challenged current academic orthodoxies and made a powerful case for regaining and retaining democratic control over the content and development of human rights. This collection of his essays reaches back to his pioneering work on socialist rights in the 1980s and forward from his seminal book, The Legal Theory of Ethical Positivism (1996). An introductory essay provides an historical overview of Professor Campbell's work and argues for the continuing importance of 'democratic positivism' at a time when it is again becoming clear that courts are ineffective protectors of human rights.

In this book, a distinguished international group of legal theorists re-examine legal positivism as a prescriptive political theory and consider its implications for the constitutionally defined roles of legislatures and courts. The issues are illustrated with recent developments in Australian constitutional law.

This collection of Tom Campbell's essays reaches back to his pioneering work on socialist rights in the 1980s and forward from his seminal book, The Legal Theory of Ethical Positivism (1996).

17 Stanley L. Paulson (1992), 'The Neo-Kantian Dimension of Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 12, pp. 311-32. -- 18 Anthony J. Sebok (1995), 'Misunderstanding Positivism', Michigan Law Review, 93, pp. 2054-132. -- Name Index

The book brings together 33 state-of-the-art chapters on the import and the pros and cons of legal positivism.

Despite persistent criticism from a variety of different perspectives including natural law, legal realism and socio-legal studies, legal positivism remains as an enduring theory of law. The essays contained in this volume represent the most balanced responses toward legal positivism and although largely sympathetic, the essays do not fail to criticize elements of the tradition wherever appropriate.

Understood one way, the branch of contemporary philosophical ethics that goes by the label "metaethics" concerns certain second-order questions about ethics-questions not in ethics, but rather ones about our thought and talk about ethics, and how the ethical facts (insofar as there are any) fit into reality. Analogously, the branch of contemporary philosophy of law that is often called "general jurisprudence" deals with certain second order questions about law- questions not in the law, but rather ones about our thought and talk about the law, and how legal facts (insofar as there are any) fit into reality. Put more roughly (and using an alternative spatial metaphor), metaethics concerns a range of foundational questions about ethics, whereas general jurisprudence concerns analogous questions about law. As these characterizations suggest, the two sub-disciplines have much in common, and could be thought to run parallel to each other. Yet, the connections between the two are currently mostly ignored by philosophers, or at least under-scrutinized. The new essays collected in this book are aimed at changing this state of affairs. Dimensions of Normativity collects together works by metaethicists and legal philosophers that address a number of issues that are of common interest, with the goal of accomplishing a new rapprochement between the two sub-disciplines.