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Evolution and the common law / Allan C. Hutchinson.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Hutchinson, Allan C., 1951- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Common law--Methodology.
- Common law.
- Common law--Study and teaching.
- Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
- Darwin, Charles.
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900-2002.
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg.
- Evolution--Philosophy.
- Evolution.
- Methodology.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (x, 294 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
- Other Title:
- Evolution & the Common Law
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- System Details:
- text file
- Summary:
- This book offers a radical challenge to 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 original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (id est, events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (id est, events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.
- Contents:
- Evolution and the common law : an introduction
- Darwin's excellent adventure : evolution and law
- The creationists' persistence : jurisprudence and God
- Taming the bulldog : the natural and the pragmatic
- Tracking the common law : the routine and the revolutionary
- Looking for Gadamer : traditions and transformations
- Reading between the lines : courts and constitutions
- Making changes : progress and politics
- Among the trees : a conclusion.
- Notes:
- Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
- Other Format:
- Print version:
- ISBN:
- 9780511610394
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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