In this one-of-a-kind text, George P. Fletcher, a renowned legal theorist, offers a provocative yet accessible overview of the basics of legal thought. The first section of the book is designed to introduce the reader to fundamental concepts such as the rule of law and deciding cases under the law. It continues with an analysis of the values of justice, desert, consent, and equality, as they figure into our judgment of legal cultures in terms of soundness and legitimacy. The final chapters address the problems of morality and consistency in the law. In each case the author not only introduces the basic ideas but considers important arguments in the contemporary literature and raises original claims of his own. Basic Concepts of Legal Thought fills a void in the literature, as there is no other volume that both eases law students into the mysteries of legal philosophy and provides an introduction to the legal mind for non-lawyers.

This is a brief introduction to the major issues in legal philosophy, intended for use as a secondary text in law schools, and in graduate and undergraduate courses in philosophy of law, jurisprudence and legal issues.

This volume examines legal ideology in the US from the height of the Gilded Age through the time of the New Deal, when the Supreme Court began to discard orthodox thought in favour of more modernist approaches to law. Wiecek places this era of legal thought in its historical context, integrating social, economic, and intellectual analyses.

In this text, Fletcher maintains that there is much greater unity among diverse systems of criminal justice than commonly realized, and that any adequate system of criminal law must address a set of universal, basic issues.

ÔThis book proves to be an excellent guide through the labyrinth of law. Its crucial point is legal order viewed from the perspective of a situated ÒWeÓ. Jurisprudence appears as an implicit sort of thinking, embedded in moral, political, epistemological, and linguistic contexts. Numerous example cases lead us from everyday issues to the abysses of violence. Anyone who practises or studies law will highly profit from reading this book. One sees how law functions by being more than mere law.Õ Ð Bernhard Waldenfels, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany Legal Thought and Philosophy clarifies background questions in legal research projects, such as the relationship between law and justice, law and politics, law and knowledge, facts and norms, normativity and validity, constituent and constitutional power, and rule and context. It provides advanced students in law and philosophy with an account of legal thinking that combines analytical and phenomenological insights. From a conception of justice as principled political self-restraint, the book explains why there are moral reasons to separate law from morality conceptually and in what sense a legal order is positive Ð that is, set by authority and bound up with history. The book explores the conditions under which law may become an object of knowledge and theorizing, before finally discussing how these features come together in law as rule-following by citizens, officials, judges, and legislators alike. Addressing advanced students in law and philosophy, this key book: ¥ bridges separate traditions in legal philosophy (in particular analytical philosophy and phenomenology) ¥ develops a view of law as an institution of authority from a conception of justice in the socio-political relationship between ÔweÕ and Ôthe othersÕ ¥ presents a systematic account of normativity and validity ¥ explains in what sense law is Ôdoing things with rulesÕ.

For more than a century, law schools have trained students to 'think like a lawyer'. In these times of legal crisis, both in legal education and in global society, what does that mean for the rest of us? In this book, thirty leading international scholars - including Louis Assier-Andrieu, Marianne Constable, Yves Dezalay, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Bryant G. Garth, Peter Goodrich, Duncan Kennedy, Martti Koskenniemi, Shaun McVeigh, Samuel Moyn, Annelise Riles, Charles F. Sabel and William H. Simon - examine what is distinctive about legal thought. They probe the relation between law and time, law and culture, and legal thought and legal action; the nature of current legal thought; the geography of legal thought; and the conditions for recognition of a new 'contemporary' style of law. This work will help theorists, social scientists, historians and students understand the intellectual context of legal problems, legal doctrine, and jurisprudential trends in the current conjuncture.