Dangerous Supplements : Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence Paperback / softback

Edited by Peter Fitzpatrick

Part of the Post-Contemporary Interventions series

Paperback / softback

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks

Description

In Dangerous Supplements expert legal scholars employing a variety of theoretical perspectivesâ€”feminism, poststructuralism, semiotics, and Marxismâ€”challenge predominating views in jurisprudence.

Prevailing notions of the nature of the law, they argue, have failed to recognize the lawâ€™s dependence on social constructs and the indeterminance of language.

The contributors further claim that proponents of traditional notions have borrowed knowledge from other fields, only to reject that knowledge as ultimately subversive and dangerous in its ramifications. Taking as a point of departure H. L. A. Hartâ€™s The Concept of the Law, Peter Fitzgerald shows how Hart adopted Wittgensteinâ€™s linguistic theory to overthrow J.

L. Austinâ€™s â€œsimpleâ€ conception of rules and habits in law, only to jettison this theory in order to locate the essence of law in its evolution from a â€œprimal scene.â€ Other chapters examine the way in which the setting of English law above social relations has masked an imperial mission; how the philosophies of Hayek and Marx, as well as the discourses of liberalism, feminism, semiotics, and poststructuralism, have been assiduously marginalized and rendered inessential to jurisprudence.