General Jurisprudence: Understanding Law From A Global Perspective (Law in Context)
Cambridge University Press, 12/2/2009
EAN 9780521738095, ISBN10: 0521738091
Paperback, 544 pages, 24.7 x 17.4 x 2.8 cm
Language: English
This book explores how globalisation influences the understanding of law. Adopting a broad concept of law and a global perspective, it critically reviews mainstream Western traditions of academic law and legal theory. Its central thesis is that most processes of so-called 'globalisation' take place at sub-global levels and that a healthy cosmopolitan discipline of law should encompass all levels of social relations and the legal ordering of these relations. It illustrates how the mainstream Western canon of jurisprudence needs to be critically reviewed and extended to take account of other legal traditions and cultures. Written by the one of the foremost scholars in the field, this important work presents an exciting alternative vision of jurisprudence. It challenges the traditional canon of legal theorists and guides the reader through a field undergoing seismic changes in the era of globalisation. This is essential reading for all students of jurisprudence and legal theory.
Part I
1. Jurisprudence, globalisation and the discipline of law
the need for a new general jurisprudence
2. Analytical jurisprudence in a global context
3. Mapping law
families, civilisations, cultures, and traditions
4. Constructing conceptions of law
beyond Hart, Tamanaha and Llewellyn
5. Normative jurisprudence, utilitarianism, and theories of justice
6. Human rights as moral, political and legal rights
7. Meeting the challenges to human rights as moral rights
Griffin, Tasioulas and Sen
8. Empirical dimensions of law and justice
Part II
9. Diffusion of law
a global perspective
10. Surface law
11. Is law important? Law and the Millennium Development Goals
12. The significance of non-state law
13. Human rights
Southern voices
14. Conclusion.
'With general exhortation and detailed illustration, this book promotes the skills and techniques of municipal jurisprudence and challenges its complacencies, through making the case for a global perspective on law.' Andrew Haplin, Swansea University 'Having long advocated a contextual appreciation of law, in General Jurisprudence, William Twining insists that we cannot understand law without taking a more cosmopolitan approach - an approach that moves beyond Western legal traditions to embrace the many different practices of social ordering. This is vintage Twining, clear and compelling while always challenging.' Roger Brownsword, King's College London