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This second edition of a classic in Anglo-American legal philosophy reopens the dialogue between Bentham's work and contemporary legal philosophy. Gerald Postema revisits the themes of the first edition in light of the latest scholarly criticism and provides new insights into the historical-philosophical roots of international law.
List of contents
- Part I: Law, Custom, and Reason
- 1: Elements of Classical Common Law Theory
- 2: Law, Social Union, and Collective Rationality
- 3: Hume's Jurisprudence: Law, Justice, and Human Nature
- 4: Hume's Jurisprudence: Common Law Conventionalism
- Part II Bentham's Critique of Common Law: The Roots of Positivism
- 5: Utilitarian Justice and the Tasks of Law
- 6: Bentham as a Common Law Revisionist
- 7: Custom, Rules, and Sovereignty
- 8: Plucking Off the Mask of Mystery
- 9: Utilitarian Positivism
- Part III: Law, Utility, and Adjudication
- 10: The Judge as Paterfamilias
- 11: Judicial Virtues and the Sanctions of Public Opinion
- 12: Utilitarian Adjudication within the Shadow of the Code
- 13: The Coherence of Bentham's Theory of Law
About the author
Gerald J. Postema is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; a Guggenheim Fellow (2005-6); a Rockefeller Fellow, Bellagio (2001); and a Fellow of the Netherland Institute for Advanced Studies (1996-7). He has held visiting posts at the University of Cambridge, the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Athens, Yale University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Summary
This second edition of a classic in Anglo-American legal philosophy reopens the dialogue between Bentham's work and contemporary legal philosophy. Gerald J. Postema revisits the themes of the first edition in light of the latest scholarly criticism and provides new insights into the historical-philosophical roots of international law.
Additional text
Scholars have much to thank Professor Postema for, in mapping out so clearly the relationship between Bentham's thoughts on substantive law and procedure, and for placing it so firmly in the context of eighteenth century common law thought. It is rare to find a book which changes the way one thinks about great jurists: this is one such book.
