The legal essays by Michael Bayles in this collection display his commitment to utilitarianism both as a moral theory and an analytical device. A utilitarian must choose between the best of all possible alternatives and so must lay out the alternatives and thus their consequences carefully and completely. As it happens, there is no better way of understanding why something is as it is in the law, and no better way to lay the foundations for criticism and improvement, than to lay out what the alternatives are, carefully distinguishing them, their justifications, and their implications for changing other areas of the law and for changing our relation to the law. Bayles was a master at such work, and each essay thus repays careful study for anyone concerned about the law. The essays cover a wide variety of topics, from contract law to the criminal law, from torts to theory, and form a natural set. Laying out the alternatives in one area makes it much clearer how and why alternatives in other areas are acceptable or required. Interconnections within the legal system as a whole not readily visible when studying one area of the law become obvious when several are laid out side-by-side using the analytical skill required by a good utilitarian.

Being Apart from Reasons deals with the question of how we should go about using reasons to decide what to do. More particularly, the book presents objections to the most common response given by contemporary legal and political theorists to the moral complexity of decision-making in modern societies, namely: the attempt to release public agents from their argumentative burden by insulating a particular set of reasons from the general pool of reasons and assigning the former systematic priority over all other reasons. That strategy is apparent both in Rawls’ claim that reasons concerning the right are systematically prior to reasons concerning the good and in Raz’s claim that pre-emptive reasons are systematically prior to first-order reasons. The same strategy is also instantiated by certain arguments for the procedural value of law, such as Jeremy Waldron’s. In the book, each of those arguments for the insulation of reasons is objected to in order to defend the thesis the reasoning by public agents must always be as comprehensive as possible. The remaining chapters object to those arguments mentioned above which aim at justifying the exclusion of certain reasons from public agents' decision-making.

The main subject of this book is the rather fascinating link between an acceptable concept of political whole and its legal and moral implications. When we face this problem, we find that widespread categories like `happiness' and "friendship" are at the same time necessary and dangerous, crucial and elusive. In order to make the case against the so-called Legal Enforcement of Morals, and to grasp the complex relationship between law and morality from a liberal point of view, it is not enough to reject a pattern of happiness, or of human flourishing, from which to draw normative instructions for men and women - it must be recognized that integration of individuals in the comprehensive groups, as well as in the political whole itself, is not the only valuable option. The fragile value of a relative lack of integration, a "right to unhappiness", turns out to be, eventually, what makes the weak, but decisive, moral primacy of liberal societies.

Who presupposes Kelsen's basic norm? Is it possible to defend the presupposition in a way that is convincing? And what difference does the presupposition make? Endeavouring to highlight the role of basic assumptions in the law, the author argues that the verb "to presuppose', with Kelsen, has not only a conceptual but also a normative dimension; and that the expression 'presupposing the basic norm'is adequate in so far as it marks the descriptive-normative nature of utterances made in specifically legal speech-situations. Addressed to legal theorists in general, the treatise purports to show that Kelsen's doctrine lends itself to an interpretation according to which the very act of "presupposing" the Grundnorm can be understood as a Grund, i.e. normative source of all positive law; and, what is more, that this interpretation admits of addressing the issue of the (formal) legitimacy of supra-national and directly applicable rules and other norms.

This is the first comprehensive account of the modern international law of treaty interpretation expressed in 1969 Vienna Convention, Articles 31-33. As stated by the anonymous referee, it is the most theoretically advanced and analytically refined work yet accomplished on this topic. The style of writing is clear and concise, and the organisation of the book meets the demands of scholars and practitioners alike.

This book presents the papers and comments on those papers delivered at a colloquium held at the Australian National University in December 2008 to celebrate 50 years since the publication in the Harvard Law Review of the famous and wide-ranging debate between HLA Hart and Lon L Fuller. These essays do not to re-run that debate and they are not confined to discussion of the jurisprudential issues canvassed by Hart and Fuller. Rather they pick up on strands in the debate and re-think them in the light of social, political and intellectual developments in the past 50 years and changed ways of understanding law and other normative systems. This collection looks forward rather than backward using the debate as a point of departure and inspiration.

This book considers the seminal debate in jurisprudence between Ronald Dworkin and Stanley Fish. It looks at the exchange between Dworkin and Fish, initiated in the 1980s, and analyses the role the exchange has played in the development of contemporary theories of interpretation, legal reasoning, and the nature of law. The book encompasses 4 key themes of the debate between these authors: legal theory and its critical role, interpretation and critical constraints, pragmatism and interpretive communities, and some general implications of the debate for issues like the nature of legal theory and the possibility of objectivity. The collection brings together prominent legal theorists and one of the protagonists of the debate: Professor Stanley Fish, who concludes the collection with an interview in which he discusses the main topics discussed in the collection.

The last decade has witnessed a particularly intensive debate over methodological issues in legal theory. The publication of Julie Dickson's Evaluation and Legal Theory (2001) was significant, as were collective returns to H.L.A. Hart's 'Postscript' to The Concept of Law. While influential articles have been written in disparate journals, no single collection of the most important papers exists. This volume - the first in a three volume series - aims not only to fill that gap but also propose a systematic agenda for future work. The editors have selected articles written by leading legal theorists, including, among others, Leslie Green, Brian Leiter, Joseph Raz, Ronald Dworkin, and William Twining, and organized under four broad categories: 1) problems and purposes of legal theory; 2) the role of epistemology and semantics in theorising about the nature of law; 3) the relation between morality and legal theory; and 4) the scope of phenomena a general jurisprudence ought to address.

This collection of essays from legal philosophers offers an assessment of the nature and viability of legal positivism. It addresses questions such as: to what extent is the law adequately described as autonomous?; and should legal theorists maintain a conceptual separation of law and morality?.

Readings in the Philosophy of Law brings together central texts on such topics as legal reasoning, the limits of individual liberty, responsibility and punishment, and international law. The included selections provide superb coverage of both classic and contemporary views, and are edited only lightly to allow readers to grapple with arguments in their original form. Culver and Giudice’s clear, accessible introductions discuss key terms, claims, issues, and points of connection and disagreement. Readings are placed within their historical and social contexts, with analogies and examples emphasizing the continuing relevance of the arguments at issue. This third edition is updated to take account of the rise of legal pluralism, debates over judicial review of constitutional rights, anti-terrorism laws, hate crime, and non-state law at both regional and global levels.