The Legal Studies Reader

Book excerpt: The Legal Studies Reader is an innovative, clearly focused contribution to the growing literature in the new area of legal studies. Emphasizing the large issues that animate current debates over legal rules and principles and the proper roles of lawyers and judges, this is a book of conversations by the editors and some of the major figures of modern legal thought. Ronald Dworkin, John Finnis, Lon Fuller, H.L.A. Hart, Marc Galanter and others appear here in the seminal essays that have influenced generations of students of the law. Beginning with a series of exchanges aimed at highlighting differences and leading the student into the essays in the second part, the editors debate law and violence, law and objectivity, law and society, and law and reason. The essays that follow develop these themes in depth, often with explicit reference to one another. Ranging from Legal Realism to the «Berkeley Perspective» to Critical Race Theory and Legal Feminism, The Legal Studies Reader charts the main theoretical positions that still dominate our thinking about law. Anyone interested in how law affects the pursuit of a fully developed, truly human life should read this book.