The Philosophy of Law: A Very Short Introduction

The philosophy of law is one of the few fields of philosophy that have remained legitimate in the sense that practical questions and contemplations are not eschewed. Too often philosophical debate wanders into conceptual hallways that could best be described as mazes, but one cannot get to their centers even with keeping one hand on the wall. One gets forever lost in the entanglement of concepts, with nothing ever settled, and if an idea is deemed to be practical it follows that it must be uninteresting or illegitimate. But legal reasoning is a requirement for human well being, and then the question arises as to what system of concepts best encapsulates it. Many questions arise when contemplating proper philosophical frameworks for legal contemplation, and many of these are answered in this book, written of course for those readers who need a quick introduction to the subject matter. No reader would expect an in-depth discussion of the philosophy of law from this book, but there is enough in it to enable readers to investigate specialized topics of interest. The author begins the book by stating that the philosophy of law is "rarely an abstract, impractical pursuit", and he explains the (weak) demarcation between "descriptive" and "normative" legal theory. Because of its place in history, the author discusses the doctrine of natural law first, and this discussion sheds considerable light on why many modern conservatives are committed to this philosophy of law: it seems to make legitimate the social hierarchies that these conservatives insist we respect. The doctrine of legal positivism is then discussed, and in this regard the most interesting (and disconcerting) discussion is the "pure theory of law" of Hans Kelsen. The Kelsen theory is interesting since legal norms in this conception are all relational: any one particular norm must be justified or authorized by another norm, giving in the end a large hierarchy of norms with a "basic norm" sitting on top of the hierarchy and representing a completely formal or hypothetical construct. One should not view it as arbitrary though, since its selection is based on whether or not the legal order is "effective". The author does not really elaborate on this notion, but the open-ended nature of his discussion motivates the reader to investigate this doctrine in more detail through outside reading. If read in the light of current controversies in the interpretation of legal statutes by the United States Supreme Court, probably the most interesting discussion in the book concerns the legal philosophy of Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin himself is very critical of recent decisions that have been made by the Supreme Court in the last two years, but his criticisms in this regard are not brought out in this book. What is discussed is a conception of the law that seems "extralegal" in that it views legal contexts as being intertwined with moral and political ones. This makes legal reasoning more than just an app

The Very Short Introduction... series has several advantages over other series that serve the same function of providing an introduction to a subject matter. The main advantage is physical size. Mr. Clark refers to it as the perfect "plane" book. That's true. But even better, it is a true pocket book. They fit easily into the back of one's jeans waiting for the odd moment to be pulled out and used. They can usually be easily read in a couple of hours. But that format has limitations. I find that the VSI volumes that are devoted to a single thinker are much more useful than the ones that cover a broad subject matter. (It inspires me to a bad pun. "A very short intro to a very big subject" is almost Oxfordmoronic. O, never mind.) At best, when dealing with a subject matter as opposed to an individual thinker the VSIs are concise intros. But sometimes, as with the VSI to The Philosophy of Law the treatment seems shallow. Wacks is very good on some of his thinkers: Rawls, Dworkin, Hart, Weber, and Habermas are all fairly well done. Some of the others are not as well handled- I found his treatment of Locke, Marx, Foucault to be cursory at best. It felt like a survey of a survey. So take it for what it is. This volume is a very quick overview of a lot of thinkers (see Mr. Clark's review for a good listing). Some of these thinkers are important enough to deserve their own volume in the series (Locke, Marx, and Habermas). Others like Rawls and Dworkin deserve such treatment. Prof. Wacks has provided us with a quick and cheap way to orient ourselves to future reading in this field. I just cannot help but feel that he could have done better. That if he had taken the time to flesh out his presentation for another fifty or so pages that it would have been a much more useful member of the VSI family.

This book is a great way of summarizing the most important points of books like Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of law making studying a lot easier and a lot more effective. I recommend this book to any first year law students who can't understand, or don't have the time to read long and difficult books.

This book was my first introduction to the "Very Short Introduction" series of inexpensive paperbacks published by Oxford University Press. The nice thing is that these books measure about 7 X 4.5 inches, so they make the perfect "plane" books, but yet are produced to the strict standards of OUP. I was just amazed at how much solid analysis is contained in the 107 pages of text in this volume, not to mention the "references" section, bibliography, and complete index. The author, who is emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, has essentially boiled down his comprehensive "Understanding Jurisprudence" volume (OUP, 2005, 350 pages) into this concise survey. There are also 15 illustrations and several boxed pages where a particular point is examined in a minute analysis. The book is divided into 6 chapters. The topics are Natural Law (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Finnis and Fuller); Legal Positivism (Hart, Bentham, Austin, Kelsen, Raz); Law as Interpretation (devoted to Dworkin); Rights and Justice (Hohfeld, Posner, Rawls); Law and Society (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Habermas, Foucault); and Critical Legal Theory (CLS, Unger, Lacan, Derrida, feminist legal theory, critical race theory). This is a lot to cover in a full-sized volume, but amazingly there is much solid analysis and discussion built into this small paperback. It is the perfect device for those wanting to refresh their familiarity with the jurisprudential field; it also serves as an effective and skillfully-written introduction for those new to the topic. There are many additional interesting titles in this Oxford series that I plan to explore--what a great idea!