Jurisprudence: Themes and Concepts offers an original introduction to, and critical analysis of, the central themes studied in jurisprudence courses.The book is organised in three parts: Part I sets out the key elements of modern law and their relation to political, economic, and social conditions. Part II presents competing accounts of the nature of legal validity, legality, legal reasoning, and justice. Both parts feature corresponding tutorial questions. Part III contai...

Against an ever-expanding and diversifying ‘rights talk’, this book re-opens the question of obligation from not only legal but also ethical, sociological and political perspectives. Its premise is that obligation has a primacy ahead of rights, because rights attach to practices and modes of being that are already saturated with obligations. Obligations thus lie at the core not just of law but of community. Yet the distinctive meanings, range and situations of obligation have tended to rem...

Obligations: New Trajectories in Law provides a critical analysis of the role of obligations in contemporary legal and social practices.As rights have become the preeminent feature of modern political and legal discourse, the work of obligations has been overshadowed. Questioning and correcting this dominant image of our time, this book brings obligations back into view in a way that fits better with the realities of contemporary social life. Following a historical account...

This collection of essays by an international group of authors explores the ways in which law and legal institutions are used in countries coming to terms with traumatic pasts and, in some cases, traumatic presents. In putting to question what is often taken for granted in uncritical calls for reconciliation, it critically analyses and frequently challenges the political and legal assumptions underlying discourses of reconciliation. Drawing on a broad spectrum of disciplinary and interdisc...

Law is widely assumed to provide contemporary society with its most important means of organizing responsibility. Across a broad range of areas of social life – from the activities of states and citizens, to work, business and private relationships – it is understood that legal regulation plays a crucial role in defining and limiting responsibilities. But Law and Irresponsibility pursues the opposite view: it explores how law organizes irresponsibility.With a particular fo...

International law is playing an increasingly important role in international politics. However, international relations theorists have thus far failed to conceptualise adequately the role that law plays in politics. Instead, IR theorists have tended to operate with a limited conception of law. An understanding of jurisprudence and legal methodology is a crucial step towards achieving a better account of international law in IR theory. But many of the flaws in IR's idea of law stem also fro...

The universal promise of contemporary international law has long inspired countries of the Global South to use it as an important field of contestation over global inequality. Taking three central examples, Sundhya Pahuja argues that this promise has been subsumed within a universal claim for a particular way of life by the idea of 'development'. As the horizon of the promised transformation and concomitant equality has receded ever further, international law has legitimised an ever-increa...

Democracy is the central political issue of our age, yet debates over its nature and goals rarely engage with feminist concerns. Now that women have the right to vote, they are thought to present no special problems of their own. But despite the seemingly gender-neutral categories of individual or citizen, democratic theory and practice continues to privilege the male.This book reconsiders dominant strands in democratic thinking - focusing on liberal democracy, participatory democr...

The premise of this book is that legal theory in general, and critical legal theory in particular, do not facilitate the identification of choices being made in the different facets of law -- whether in the enacting, interpreting, administering or theorising of law.

This title was first published in 2000: Bringing oes liberalism have either the theoretical capacity or the political durability to provide for social justice, particularly given the challenges of the new millennium? From a diverse array of disciplinary, cultural and critical perspectives, the contributors to this timely and incisive collection of essays cover ground ranging from the philosophical adequacy of liberalism’s central tenets, to the treatment of minority and alternative culture...

This book examines the contribution social theory can make to understanding different human rights which operate in a variety of settings. Including an introduction to the theoretical issues raised by the study of rights, it covers a range of individual and collective rights, illuminating the relationship between social theory and human rights.

Chris Brown is a prominent international political theorist who has contributed to debates on pluralism, justice and human rights. This book draws together seventeen of his most important and influential articles from the last twenty years.These essays include influential statements on the role of normative theory and international ethics, the so-called ‘cosmopolitan-communitarian debate’ and anti-foundationalist thought in international relations, as well as important contribution...