Educating Oneself in Public: Critical Essays in Jurisprudence

An examination of the main ideas that have dominated Anglo-American legal philosophy since the Second World War. The author probes major themes such as: whether there can be right answers to all disputed law cases; how laws and other rules impact on the practical rationality of actors subject to their authority; and more.
These 11 essays constitute an education in the Anglo-American jurisprudence of the second half of the 20th century. The book examines both the thought of major figures such as H.L.A. Hart, Joseph Raz, Ronald Dworkin, Lon Fuller, and Richard Rorty, and the general themes of major movements such as legal realism, post-modernism, and pragmatism. Despite this focus on the thoughts of others the book is not a survey but is a critical probing of particular ideas often attributed to such figures.