This book examines the success of Frederick Schauer’s efforts to reclaim force as a core element of a general concept of law by approaching the issue from different legal traditions and distinct perspectives. In discussing Schauer’s main arguments, it contributes to answering the question whether force, sanctions and coercion should (or should not) be regarded as necessary elements of the concept of law, and whether legal philosophy should be concerned at all (or exclusively) with necessary or essential properties. While it was long assumed that legal norms are essentially defined by their force, it was H.L.A. Hart who raised doubts about whether law and coercion are necessarily connected, referring to the empowering, or more generally enabling, character exhibited by some legal norms. Prominent scholars following and refining Hart’s argument built an influential case for excluding force as a necessary element of the concept of law. Most recently, however, Frederick Schauer has made a strong case to reaffirm the force of law, shedding new light on this essential question. This book collects important commentaries, never before published, by prominent legal philosophers evaluating Schauer’s substantive arguments and his claims about jurisprudential methodology.

Bentham's law -- The possibility and probability of noncoercive law -- In search of the puzzled man -- Do people obey the law? -- Are officials above the law? -- Coercing obedience -- Of carrots and sticks -- Coercion's arsenal -- Awash in a sea of norms -- The differentiation of law

The purpose of this volume is to rethink the questions posed by Derrida's writings and his unique philosophical positioning, without reference to the catch phrases that have supposedly summed up deconstruction.

This volume offers a comprehensive review of legal ethics as an international movement. Contributors include many of the key participants to the legal ethics field from all over the world and many of the recognised emerging thinkers, taking stock of the last thirty years of legal ethics practice and scholarship.

Following on Making Civil Rights Law, which covered Thurgood Marshall's career from 1936-1961, this book focuses on Marshall's career on the Supreme Court from 1961-1991, where he was first Afro-American Justice. The first book on Justice Thurgood Marshall's years on the Supreme Court based on a comprehensive review of the Supreme Court papers of Justices Marshall and William J. Brennan, this work describes Marshall's special approach to constitutional law in areas ranging from civil rights and the death penalty to abortion and poverty. It also describes the Supreme Court's operations during Marshall's tenure, the relations among the justices, and the particular roles played by Chief Justice Warren Burger, Justice Brennan, and Justice Antonin Scalia. The book locates the Supreme Court's actions from 1967 to 1991 in a broader historical and political context, explaining how Marshall's liberalism became increasingly isolated on a Court influenced by nation's drift in a more conservative direction.

Two preeminent legal scholars explain what tort law is all about and why it matters, and describe their own view of tort’s philosophical basis: civil recourse theory. Tort law is badly misunderstood. In the popular imagination, it is “Robin Hood” law. Law professors, meanwhile, mostly dismiss it as an archaic, inefficient way to compensate victims and incentivize safety precautions. In Recognizing Wrongs, John Goldberg and Benjamin Zipursky explain the distinctive and important role that tort law plays in our legal system: it defines injurious wrongs and provides victims with the power to respond to those wrongs civilly. Tort law rests on a basic and powerful ideal: a person who has been mistreated by another in a manner that the law forbids is entitled to an avenue of civil recourse against the wrongdoer. Through tort law, government fulfills its political obligation to provide this law of wrongs and redress. In Recognizing Wrongs, Goldberg and Zipursky systematically explain how their “civil recourse” conception makes sense of tort doctrine and captures the ways in which the law of torts contributes to the maintenance of a just polity. Recognizing Wrongs aims to unseat both the leading philosophical theory of tort law—corrective justice theory—and the approaches favored by the law-and-economics movement. It also sheds new light on central figures of American jurisprudence, including former Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Benjamin Cardozo. In the process, it addresses hotly contested contemporary issues in the law of damages, defamation, malpractice, mass torts, and products liability.