Subjects:

Comparative Law

Contents:

1. A Theory of Tradition? The Changing Presence of the Past

2. Between Traditions: Identity, Persuasion and Survival

3. A Chthonic Legal Tradition: to Recycle the World

4. A Talmudic Legal Tradition: the Perfect Author

5. A Civil Law Tradition: the Centrality of the Person

6. An Islamic Legal Tradition: the Law of a Later Revelation

7. A Common Law Tradition: the Ethic of Adjudication

8. A Hindu Legal Tradition: the Law as King, but which Law?

9. An Asian Legal Tradition: MAKE IT NEW (with Marx?)

10. Reconciling Legal Traditions: Sustainable Diversity in Law

This prize-winning work offers a major new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, islamic law, common law, hindu law and Asian law.

Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change, and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in terms of multivalent and non-conflictual forms of logic and thought.

This book will be invaluable to law students and lawyers engaged in comparative or transnational work, historians, social scientists, and all those interested in the legal traditions that underpin the world's major societies.

New to this edition:-

• Preface outlining the practical relevance of the material
• Annotated web links at the end of each chapter to promote further research
• Discussion of archaeological challenges to historical adherence to legal traditions
• Reference to notions of relative efficiency of different legal traditions
• Coverage of the debate on the calculation of world poverty and wealth distribution
• Reference to the debate on the effect of technology on the diffusion of traditions