“'What About Law?' succeeds where so many legal guidebooks fail ... [it] skilfully demystifies the law and ably proves its argument. The law is, indeed, all around us - and this book will whet your appetite to find out how and why.” – Alex Wade, The Times (of the previous edition) Law is one of the few subjects that the school leaver, choosing a degree course, will have very little real understanding of. This book comes to the rescue by clearly setting out what a prospective law student can expect and why a student should choose to study law. This new edition is updated to reflect the reality of studying law today, highlighting changes due to Brexit and reforms to constitutional law. The book covers the compulsory subjects every law student has to study: contract, criminal, property and trusts law, and brings them up to date. With a clear core structure and approach it takes a case from each of these subjects to illustrate legal issues and methodology. The writing style is accessible and has the audience – novices to law – firmly in mind. What About Law? shows how the study of law can be fun, intellectually stimulating and challenging. It introduces prospective students to the legal system, legal reasoning, critical thinking and argument. Written by a team of experienced teachers, this book should be read by every student about to embark on the study of law.

This advanced introduction to central questions in legal philosophy attempts to breathe new life into stalled research.

This brief book is designed to prepare students for their first year of law school, thereby decreasing their anxiety and increasing their chances of achieving academic success. Also appropriate for non-J.D. students, including LLM students from foreign countries and graduate students outside law school. Features: Gives student basic grounding in discrete non-legal topics that are important to the contemporary study of law Includes and“Test Your Understandingand” boxes to allow students to use what they are learning Friendly writing style Images and graphics help students remember material

Top US legal scholars and political scientists examine how the law shapes judges’ behavior and decisions, and what it means for society at large. Although there is a growing consensus among legal scholars and political scientists, significant points of divergence remain. Contributors to What’s Law Got to Do with It? explore ways to reach greater accord on the complexity and nuance of judicial decision making and judicial elections, while acknowledging that agreement on what judges do is not likely to occur any time soon. As the first forum in which political scientists and legal scholars engage with one another on these hot button issues, this volume strives to establish a true interdisciplinary conversation. The inclusion of reactions from practicing judges puts into high relief the deep-seated and opposing beliefs about the roles of law and politics in judicial work. Praise for What’s Law Got to Do with It? “Geyh (associate dean for research and John F. Kimberling professor of law, Indiana Univ. School of Law) is well qualified to edit this reader about the interaction of law and politics in contemporary society. The contributors . . . are among the very best scholars in the legal and political science realm . . . . The writing is lively and easy to follow for the somewhat sophisticated reader . . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice “Readers will find these essays fascinating, thoughtful and sometimes infuriating, as conventional disciplinary wisdom is defended, modified and refuted. The result is a terrific text for all students of the legal process.” —Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland “This volume pulls together an excellent cast to examine one of the most intriguing and most difficult questions in the study of law and politics today—what role does law play in the job of judging? There is a lot to learn in these pages, and this book does a fine job of pushing the conversation forward.” —Keith Whittington, Princeton University

What is law? This question has preoccupied philosophers from Plato to Thomas Hobbes to H. L. A. Hart. Yet many others find it perplexing. How could we possibly know how to answer such an abstract question? And what would be the point of doing so? In Legality, Scott Shapiro argues that the question is not only meaningful but vitally important. In fact, many of the most pressing puzzles that lawyers confront—including who has legal authority over us and how we should interpret constitutions, statutes, and cases—will remain elusive until this grand philosophical question is resolved. Shapiro draws on recent work in the philosophy of action to develop an original and compelling answer to this age-old question. Breaking with a long tradition in jurisprudence, he argues that the law cannot be understood simply in terms of rules. Legal systems are best understood as highly complex and sophisticated tools for creating and applying plans. Shifting the focus of jurisprudence in this way—from rules to plans—not only resolves many of the most vexing puzzles about the nature of law but has profound implications for legal practice as well. Written in clear, jargon-free language, and presupposing no legal or philosophical background, Legality is both a groundbreaking new theory of law and an excellent introduction to and defense of classical jurisprudence.

The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.

Here is an introduction to the intellectual challenges presented by law in the western secular tradition. Treating not just British law, but the whole western tradition of law, Professor Honore guides the reader through eleven topics which straddle various branches of the law, including constitutional and criminal law, property, and contracts. He also explores moral and historical aspects of the law, including a discussion of justice and the difference between civil and common law systems. The law, Honore argues, is mainly concerned with the question of obedience to authority, and establishing the situations in which obedience is required and those in which it may be waived ought to be the central concern of all legal theorists.

The author "describes the unique stresses lawyers face, the increasing demands of the legal marketplace, the "moral neutering" imposed by a lawyers' ethical duty of advocacy, some blunt truths about clients, and the deep tensions between lawyers' professional and personal lives."

In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law/tilte will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice. Table of Contents: 1. Invitation to a Journey 2. On Categories 3. Categorizing at the Supreme Court Missouri v. Jenkins and Michael H. v. Gerald D. 4. On Narrative 5. Narratives at Court Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Freeman v. Pitts 6. On Rhetorics 7. The Rhetorics of Death McCleskey v. Kemp 8. On the Dialectic of Culture 9. Race, the Court, and America's Dialectic From Plessy through Brown to Pitts and Jenkins 10. Reflections on a Voyage Appendix: Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in the Prigg, Pitts, and Brown Opinions Notes Table of Cases Index Reviews of this book: Amsterdam, a distinguished Supreme Court litigator, wanted to do more than share the fruits of his practical experience. He also wanted to...get students to think about thinking like a lawyer...To decode what he calls "law-think," he enlisted the aid of the venerable cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...[and] the collaboration has resulted in [this] unusual book. --James Ryerson, Lingua Franca Reviews of this book: It is hard to imagine a better time for the publication of Minding the Law, a brilliant dissection of the court's work by two eminent scholars, law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam and cultural anthropologist Jerome Bruner...Issue by issue, case by case, Amsterdam and Bruner make mincemeat of the court's handling of the most important constitutional issue of the modern era: how to eradicate the American legacy of race discrimination, especially against blacks. --Edward Lazarus, Los Angeles Times Book Review Reviews of this book: This book is a gem...[Its thesis] is easily stated but remarkably unrecognized among a shockingly large number of lawyers and law professors: law is a storytelling enterprise thoroughly entrenched in culture....Whereas critical legal theorists have talked among themselves for the past two decades, Amsterdam and Bruner seek to engage all of us in a dialogue. For that, they should be applauded. --Daniel R. Williams, New York Law Journal Reviews of this book: In Minding the Law, Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their book is premised on the conviction that many of the choices made in Supreme Court opinions 'lack any justification in the text'...Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability. --Mitchell Goodman, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Reviews of this book: What do controversial Supreme Court decisions and classic age-old tales of adultery, villainy, and combat have in common? Everything--at least in the eyes of [Amsterdam and Bruner]. In this substantial study, which is equal parts dense and entertaining, the authors use theoretical discussions of literary technique and myths to expose what they see as the secret intentions of Supreme Court opinions...Studying how lawyers and judges employ the various literary devices at their disposal and noting the similarities between legal thinking and classic tactics of storytelling and persuasion, they believe, can have 'astonishing consciousness-retrieving effects'...The agile minds of Amsterdam and Bruner, clearly storehouses of knowledge on a range of subjects, allow an approach that might sound far-fetched occasionally but pays dividends in the form of gained perspective--and amusement. --Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Washington Times Reviews of this book: Stories and the way judges-intentionally or not-categorize and spin them, are as responsible for legal rulings as logic and precedent, Mr. Amsterdam and Mr. Bruner said. Their novel attempt to reach into the psyche of...members of the Supreme Court is part of a growing interest in a long-neglected and cryptic subject: the psychology of judicial decision-making. --Patricia Cohen, New York Times Most law professors teach by the 'case method,' or say they do. In this fascinating book, Anthony Amsterdam--a lawyer--and Jerome Bruner--a psychologist--expose how limited most case 'analysis' really is, as they show how much can be learned through the close reading of the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that constitute an opinion (or other pieces of legal writing). Reading this book will undoubtedly make one a better lawyer, and teacher of lawyers. But the book's value and interest goes far beyond the legal profession, as it analyzes the way that rhetoric--in law, politics, and beyond--creates pictures and convictions in the minds of readers and listeners. --Sanford Levinson, author of Constitutional Faith Tony Amsterdam, the leader in the legal campaign against the death penalty, and Jerome Bruner, who has struggled for equal justice in education for forty years, have written a guide to demystifying legal reasoning. With clarity, wit, and immense learning, they reveal the semantic tricks lawyers and judges sometimes use--consciously and unconsciously--to justify the results they want to reach. --Jack Greenberg, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School