Some law students find jurisprudence daunting, impersonal, dry and seemingly detached from practical affairs. William Twining believes that many jurists have been fascinating people struggling with questions that are both historically significant and relevant to contemporary issues. This book brings together previously published essays that centre on three related themes: reading Juristic texts, the role of narrative in law, and relations between theory and practice. Building on a pragmatic view of jurisprudence, the author explores different ways of reading and using Juristic texts, to set...

The last thirty years have witnessed a proliferation of theorising about law, as well as reflection on the very practice of that theorising. As the discipline of legal theory has flourished, so have methodological debates and controversies. These debates are not only relevant to how legal theory understands its own enterprise: its problems and aims, and issues of scope. They are also relevant to many other aspects of the practice of legal theory, and its role vis-a-vis the practice of law and the practice of other related activities, such as legal scholarship and legal education. As the...

The third in a series of three volumes on Contemporary Legal Theory, this volume deals with four topics: 1) the role of legal theory in the legal curriculum; 2) the teaching of legal theory; 3) the relationship of legal theory to legal scholarship; and 4) the relationship of legal theory to comparative law. The focus of the first two topics is on the common law world, where the debates over the aims and proper place of legal theory in the study of law have traversed a good deal of ground since John Austin's 1828 lecture, 'The Uses and the Study of Jurisprudence.' These first two parts offer a...

New to English law? Need to know how rules are made, interpreted and applied? This popular and well-established textbook will show you how. It simplifies legal method by combining examples with an account of rules in general: the who, what, why and how of interpretation. Starting with standpoint and context, it identifies factors that give rise to doubts about the interpretation of a rule and recommends a systematic approach to analysing those factors. Questions and exercises integrated in the text and on the accompanying website will help you to develop skills in reading, interpreting and...

An intellectual biography of Karl Llewellyn, originally published in 1973. Includes a preface by Frederick Schauer and an afterword by William Twining.