The Tapestry of the Law: Scotland, Legal Culture and Legal Theory

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Springer Science & Business Media, 2013 M11 11 - 258 pages
Although its concern is jurisprudence, The Tapestry of the Law is intended to offer neither an original theory of or about law nor an account of other people's theories in textbook form. It is, rather, an attempt to approach the subject without following either of these conventions. The reasons are as follows. Those engaged in legal theory are prone to assert that one cannot properly understand the law unless one takes a jurisprudential approach - preferably their own - to it. Equally, those engaged in exposition of the law may counter that legal theory fails to pay adequate attention to actual law. There is at least some truth in these claims. Analyses, courses and textbooks on both sides do often seem to be produced without reference to the other. Yet such isolation is probably more apparent than real. Most, if not all, so-called "black letter" lawyers do operate on the basis of certain jurisprudential understandings, even if these are not articulated ones. In the frequently quoted words ofF C S Northrop: There are lawyers, judges and even law professors who tell us they have no legal philosophy.
 

Contents

Some Puzzles about the Nature of Law
1
Connecting Law and Society
17
A Constitutional Culture
39
The Style of Scots Law 61
60
The Style of Scots Law continued
83
And so to Ideology
101
Matters of Interpretation
123
Law in Whose Terms?
143
And What Kind of System?
163
The Language of the Law 183
182
Some Different Critiques
203
The Role of Reason
221
Weaving the Threads
241
Index of Authors
251
Copyright

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