Philosophy of Law Books

New and Published Books

1. Rethinking Law as Process

   Creativity, Novelty, Change

   By James MacLean

   Rethinking Law as Process draws on insights from 'process philosophy' in order to rethink the nature of legal decision-making. While there have been significant developments in the application of ‘process’ thought across a number of disciplines, little notice has been taken of Whiteheadian...

   Published December 31st 2012 by Routledge
2. Evil and Moral Psychology

   By Peter Brian Barry

   Series: Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory

   This book examines what makes someone an evil person and how evil people are different from merely bad people. Rather than focusing on the "problem of evil" that occupies philosophers of religion, Barry looks instead to moral psychology—the intersection of ethics and psychology. He provides...

   Published December 18th 2012 by Routledge
3. 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 November 29th 2012 by Routledge
4. The Ends of History

   Questioning the Stakes of Historical Reason

   Edited by Amy Swiffen, Joshua Nichols

   Over two decades ago we were confronted by the end of the Soviet Union and collapse of the geo-political divisions that had defined much of the twentieth century. From this particular end, the ‘end of history’was proclaimed. But is it still possible to argue that liberal democracy and free market...

   Published November 22nd 2012 by Routledge
5. The Experience of Tragic Judgment

   By Julen Etxabe

   Adjudication between conflicting normative universes that do not share the same vocabulary, standards of rationality, and moral commitments cannot be resolved by recourse to traditional principles. Such cases are always in a sense tragic. And what is called for, in our pluralistic and conflictual...

   Published November 22nd 2012 by Routledge
6. Punishment

   By Thom Brooks

   Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many others are addressed in this highly engaging guide. Punishment is a critical...

   Published November 13th 2012 by Routledge
7. Re-reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights

   Edited by Ben Golder

   Re-reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights is the first collection in English fully to address the relevance of Michel Foucault’s thought for law. Foucault is the best known and most cited of the late twentieth-century’s ‘theory’ academics. His work continues to animate a range of different...

   Published October 23rd 2012 by Routledge
8. The Concept of Injustice

   By Eric Heinze

   The Concept of Injustice challenges traditional Western justice theory. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle through to Kant, Hegel, Marx and Rawls have subordinated the idea of injustice to the idea of justice. Misled by the word’s etymology, political theorists have assumed injustice to be the...

   Published October 23rd 2012 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 September 30th 2012 by Routledge
10. The Legal Theory of Carl Schmitt

    By Mariano Croce, Andrea Salvatore

    The Legal Theory of Carl Schmitt provides a detailed analysis of Schmitt’s institutional theory of law, mainly developed in the books published between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. By reading Schmitt’s overall work through the lens of his institutional turn, the authors...

    Published September 9th 2012 by Routledge