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Evolution and the Common Law

Allan C Hutchinson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:4th Apr '05

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Evolution and the Common Law cover

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