Evolution and the Common Law - Softcover

Hutchinson, Allan C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521614910 ISBN 13: 9780521614917

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

This book offers a radical challenge to all existing accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering fresh and original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book demonstrates that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context. It reveals that, like life, law is an organic process and that common law is a perpetual work-in-progress.

About this title

Book Description:

The book challenges existing accounts about the development and operation of the common law. Instead of the traditional tendency to view the common law as an incremental, self-contained and generally non-political endeavour, the book presents a sustained argument in defence of the idea that the common law is better thought of as an organic, situated and political enterprise in which "anything might go". The book works the middle ground between high jurisprudential theory and day-to-day doctrinal practice of adjudication and lawyering.

About the Author:

Allan C. Hutchinson is Professor and Associate Dean at Osgoode Hall Law School in York University. He has published on a variety of subjects including civil litigation, constitutional law, torts, jurisprudence, evidence, legal profession, and legal ethics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and awarded Osgoode Hall's inaugural Excellence in Teaching Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0521614910
• ISBN 13: 9780521614917
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306