The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal ScholarshipBelief in the rule of law characterizes our society, our political order, and even our identity as citizens. The Cultural Study of Law is the first full examination of what it means to conduct a modern intellectual inquiry into the culture of law. Paul Kahn outlines the tools necessary for such an inquiry by analyzing the concepts of time, space, citizen, judge, sovereignty, and theory within the culture of law's rule. Charting the way for the development of a new intellectual discipline, Paul Kahn advocates an approach that stands outside law's normative framework and looks at law as a way of life rather than as a set of rules. "Professor Kahn's perspective is neat and alluring: We need a form of legal scholarship released from the project of reform so that we can better understand who and what we are. The new discipline should study 'not legal rules, but the imagination as it constructs a world of legal meaning.' . . . [C]oncise, good reading, and recommended." —New York Law Journal |
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Adarand Constructors American appears approach architectural arguing argument authority begins beliefs Bruce Ackerman character citizen claim commitment conception consent constitutional law construction contemporary critical cultural study deployed discipline of law discourse Dworkin event example experience expression federal Federalist Papers genealogy Harv ical idea individual inquiry institutions international law interpretation judge judicial review jurisdiction jury nullification Justice Law's Empire law's rule Law's space legal imagination legal order legal practice legal reform legal rules legal scholar legal scholarship legal studies legislative meaning modern moral multiple nation norms object opinion origins outcome particular past perception perspective political action political order popular sovereign possible practice of law question realize relationship representation revolution role Ronald Dworkin rule of law Social Contract social practice Socrates stare decisis structure study of law suppression temporal theory tion tradition truth understand unique values violence Yale L.J.