These essays deal with central and controversial issues in jurisprudence. This volume emphasizes legal theory, and the collection will be of interest to students of and others involved with political philosophy as well as law students and philosophers.

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

v. 1. Jurisprudence. The end of law -- v. 2. The nature of law -- v. 3. The scope and subject matter of law. Sources, forms, modes of growth -- v. 4. Application and enforcement of law. Analysis of general juristic conceptions -- v. 5. The system of law.

This book offers a philosophical interpretation of the historical debate between Bentham and classical Common Law Theory, a debate that is fundamental to philosophical thought and has shaped contemporary conceptions of nature, tasks, and limits of law and adjudication. The author explores the philosophical foundations of Common Law theory, focusing particularly on the writings of Sir Mathew Hale and David Hume.

The author, in this series of essays, depicts the law as an essentially literary, rhetorical, and ethical activity. The topics discussed include a talk to students entering law school, describing the intellectual activity of the law, an exploration of the structure of legal thought and expression, and a dialogue which explores the ethics of argument.

Josiah Royce’s late masterpiece, ’The Problem of Christianity’, is based on a series of lectures he delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, in 1913. It presents his philosophical interpretation of Christianity’s fundamental ideas--community, sin, atonement, and saving grace; shows their relevance to the current confluence of world religions; and grounds his position upon a personal transformation into genuine loyalty toward the community of the entire human family. (publisher, edited).

This essay argues that to understand much that is most central to and characteristic of the nature and behaviour of law, one needs to supplement the time-free conceptual staples of modern jurosprudence with an understanding of the nature and behaviour of traditions in social life. The article is concerned with three elements of such an understanding. First, it suggests that traditionality is to be found in almost all legal systems, not as a peripheral but as a central feature of them. (...) Second, it questions the post-Enlightenment antinomy between tradition and change. Third, it argues that in at least two important senses of tradition, the traditionality of law is inescapable. (shrink)