Laurence Claus

Law's Evolution and Human Understanding

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

When should we follow the law? How can we know what law's words mean? What iisr law? biLaw's Evolution and Human Understandingrr presents fresh and surprising answers to these questions. In an account alive with the stories of our shared human history, Laurence Claus explains why we should discard the old idea that legal rules tell us what to do, and instead see law as a system of sayings that evolves among humans to help us better iunderstand each otherr. When driving on public roads, when buying and selling, and in countless other aspects of our work and play, we depend on law to let us know what other people are likely to do and to expect of us. Through fast-paced pages of anecdote and argument, biLaw's Evolution and Human Understandingrr explains the revolutionary consequences of seeing law as truly what Oliver Wendell Holmes called it: systematized prediction. The book reveals how this vision of law can transform our thinking about the way we make moral decisions, about the way we read law, and about many other ways that law affects our lives.

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Why do people consult the law? Why do we consult lawyers? Law's Evolution and Human Understanding articulates a fresh conception of law that builds on Oliver Wendell Holmes' celebrated insights concerning law's predictive potential. The book considers important implications of this new understanding for how we individually make moral choices, how we read law, and some of the many other ways that law affects our lives.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. September 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 155mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 544g
• ISBN-13: 9780199735099
• ISBN-10: 0199735093
• Artikelnr.: 35275523

Autorenporträt

Laurence Claus is Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He has worked for distinguished judges both in his native Australia and in the United States, and spent three years in the Office of Foreign Litigation, United States Department of Justice, based at the American Embassy in London. He holds a doctorate of philosophy in law from the University of Oxford.

Inhaltsangabe

1. What Makes Words Law?
2. How Law Grows Up in a Group
3. The Invention of "Because I Said So "
4. The Empty Idea of Authority
5. Ideas that Endure
6. When Should We Do What Law Signals?
7. How Law Works
8. Evolution and Revolution
9. Reading to Understand Each Other
10. The Life of the Law
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index