Evolution and the Common Law
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:4th Apr '05
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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- Hardback£66.00(9780521849685)
This book challenges accounts about the development and operation of the common law.
This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history.This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.
'…it does…provide for an interesting read which will be able to appeal, I think not only to Critical Legal studies enthusiasts but also to otherwise inclined legal scholars.' Social and Legal Studies
ISBN: 9780521614917
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 16mm
Weight: 410g
306 pages