Philosophy of Law Books

New and Published Books

1. Russian Legal Culture Before and After Communism

   Criminal Justice, Politics and the Public Sphere

   By Frances Nethercott

   Series: BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies

   Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and again during the Gorbachev and Yel’tsin eras, the issue of individual legal rights and freedoms occupied a central place in the reformist drive to modernize criminal justice. While in tsarist Russia the gains of legal scholars and activists in...

   Published May 14th 2012 by Routledge
2. Law, Ethics and the Biopolitical

   By Amy Swiffen

   Law, Ethics and the Biopolitical explores the idea that legal authority is no longer related to national sovereignty, but to the ‘moral’ attempt to nurture life. The book argues that whilst the relationship between law and ethics has long been a central concern in legal studies, it is now the...

   Published April 15th 2012 by Routledge
3. Jurisdiction in Deleuze: The Expression and Representation of Law

   By Edward Mussawir

   Jurisdiction in Deleuze: The Expression and Representation of Law explores an affinity between the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and jurisprudence as a tradition of technical legal thought. The author addresses and reopens a central aesthetic problem in jurisprudence: the difference between the...

   Published April 15th 2012 by Routledge
4. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law

   Edited by Andrei Marmor

   Series: Routledge Philosophy Companions

   The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law provides a comprehensive, non-technical philosophical treatment of the fundamental questions about the nature of law. Its coverage includes law's relation to morality and the moral obligations to obey the law, the main philosophical debates...

   Published March 20th 2012 by Routledge
5. Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation

   By Susanna Hovinheimo

   Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation addresses how it is that legal texts -laws, statutes and regulations – can, and do have meaning. Conventionally, legal decisions are justified with reference to language. But since language is always open to interpretation, and so cannot fully justify...

   Published February 20th 2012 by Routledge
6. Critical Legal Theory

   Edited by Costas Douzinas, Colin Perrin

   Series: Critical Concepts in Law

   Critical Legal Theory has conventionally been traced to the social, political, and philosophical movements of the 1960s and, before that, to the early-twentieth-century ‘realist’ critique of modern jurisprudence. In truth, however, its origins go back to classical and pre-modern thought, and to...

   Published December 13th 2011 by Routledge
7. Human Rights and the Capabilities Approach

   An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

   Edited by Diane Elson, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Polly Vizard

   Among several contesting views about the purpose of development and how progress should be evaluated, human rights and capabilities (or human development) stand out as two approaches that are concerned first and foremost with the well-being of individuals, their freedom, dignity and empowerment....

   Published November 27th 2011 by Routledge
8. Law's Trace: From Hegel to Derrida

   By Catherine Kellogg

   Law's Trace argues for the political importance of deconstruction by taking Derrida’s reading of Hegel as its point of departure. While it is well established that seemingly neutral and inclusive legal and political categories and representations are always, in fact, partial and exclusive, among...

   Published October 11th 2011 by Routledge
9. Divine Violence

   Walter Benjamin and the Eschatology of Sovereignty

   By James Martel

   Divine Violence looks at the question of political theology and its connection to sovereignty. It argues that the practice of sovereignty reflects a Christian eschatology, one that proves very hard to overcome even by left thinkers, such as Arendt and Derrida, who are very critical of it. These...

   Published October 3rd 2011 by Routledge
10. Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality

    Law as Absolute Hospitality

    By Jacques de Ville

    Series: Nomikoi Critical Legal Thinkers

    Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality presents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derrida’s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derrida’s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and...

    Published August 16th 2011 by Routledge