Concepts of Law

Debates surrounding the concept of law are not new. For a wide variety of reasons and in a wide variety of ways, the meaning of 'law' has long been an important part of Western thought, both within legal scholarship and beyond. The contributors to Concepts of Law are international experts from the fields of comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences. Combining theoretical analyses with case studies, they explore various legal concepts and contexts from diverse national and disciplinary perspectives. Legal and normative pluralism is a theme throughout. Some chapters discuss the development of state law and legal systems. Others wrestle with law's rhetoric and the potential utility of alternative vocabularies, e.g., 'governance' and 'governmentality'. Others reveal the rich polyjurality of the present, from the local to the global. The result is a rich picture of both present scholarship on laws and norms and the state of contemporary legal complexity, each crossing traditional boundaries.

Seán Patrick Donlan lectures at the University of Limerick (Ireland). He is President of Juris Diversitas, the Editor of Comparative Legal History, and Secretary General of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists. His research focuses on comparative law, legal history, legal philosophy, and the social sciences. Dr Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler is Vice-Director at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (Lausanne). He is also on the Executive Committee of Juris Diversitas and of the Swiss Society of International Law (Société Suisse de Droit International). His research focuses on comparative law, Asian law, and the law of torts.

Chapter 1 Concepts of Law, Seán PatrickDonlan, Lukas HeckendornUrscheler; Chapter 2 Beyond the State In and Of Legal Theory, Maksymilian DelMar; Chapter 3 Do "Legal Systems" Exist? The Concept of Law and Comparative Law, Mark VanHoecke; Chapter 4 The Concept of Law, BaudouinDupret; Chapter 5 The Truth is Out There? Legal Pluralism and the Language-Game, JaakkoHusa; Chapter 6 Remembering and Applying Legal Pluralism, WernerMenski; Chapter 7 A Sense of Law, EmmanuelMelissaris; Chapter 8 Three Perils of Legal Pluralism, CatherineValcke; Chapter 9 Legal Sociology and the Sociology of Norms, DavidNelken; Chapter 10 Is Law a Special Domain? On the Boundary between the Legal and the Social, MarianoCroce; Chapter 11 The Creation and Use of Concepts of Law when Confronting Legal and Normative Plurality, AndrewHalpin; Chapter 12 A Concept of Law for Global Legal Pluralism?, RogerCotterrell; Chapter 13 The Concept of Law in Postnational Perspective, Alessio LoGiudice; Chapter 14 What is the Context in "Law in Context"?, JuliaEckert; Chapter 15 Short Notes on the Legal Pluralism(s) in Somaliland, SalvatoreMancuso;