A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-X

   PDF

2. Precursors

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 1-28

3. The Age of Sir Edward Coke

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 29-57

4. The Age of Selden and Hale

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 59-89

5. The Age of Blackstone and Kames

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 91-121

6. The Age of the Federalists

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 123-153

7. The Age of Bentham and Austin

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 155-187

8. The Age of Maine and Holmes

   • Michael Lobban

   Pages 189-223

9. Back Matter

   Pages 225-267

   PDF

Volume 8, the third of the historical volumes of A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, offers a history of legal philosophy in common-law countries from the 17th to the 19th century. Its main focus (like that of Volume 9) is on the ways in which jurists and legal philosophers thought about law and legal reasoning. The volume begins with a discussion of the ‘common law mind’ as it evolved in late medieval and early modern England. It goes on to examine the different jurisprudential traditions which developed in England and the United States, showing that while Coke’s vision of the common law continued to exert a strong influence on American jurists, in England a more positivist approach took root, which found its fullest articulation in the work of Bentham and Austin.

• Analytic Jurisprudence
• Austinian
• Common law Jurisprudence
• Continental Europe
• Dworkin
• English-speaking World
• General Jurisprudence
• H.L.A. Hart’s
• History of Philosophy of Law
• Jurisprudential Thought
• Latin America
• Legal Philosophy

“Michael Lobban takes us from the seventeenth century through to the dawn of the twentieth  ... Every thinking lawyer should be informed and stimulated by these books, and as for the iurisperiti, any unthinking lawyers should acquire them in order to stimulate thought.” (Andrew Halpin, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, September, 2017)

• London School of Economics, London, UK

  Michael Lobban

Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History, having joined the Department of Law in 2013. After finishing his doctorate at Cambridge University, he held a Junior Research Fellowship at St. John’s College, Oxford. From 1991 to 1996, he taught in the department of law at the University of Durham, before moving first to Brunel University (1997-2000) and then to Queen Mary, University of London.

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