The Philosophy of Law: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) | 
| Author: Raymond Wacks
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 51597
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0192806912
Dewey Decimal Number: 340.1
EAN: 9780192806918
ASIN: 0192806912
Publication Date: June 22, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good Condition, delivery time 10 to 12 Working days, via Priority airmail from UK
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Product Description
This lively and accessible introduction to the social, moral, and cultural foundations of law takes a broad scope-- spanning philosophy, law, politics, and economics, and discussing a range of topics including women's rights, racism, the environment, and recent international issues such as the war in Iraq and the treatment of terror suspects. Revealing the intriguing and challenging nature of legal philosophy with clarity and enthusiasm, Raymond Wacks explores the notion of law and its role in our lives. Referring to key thinkers from the classical world to the modern, he looks at the central questions behind legal theory that have always fascinated lawyers and philosophers, as well as anyone who ever wondered about law's relation to justice, morality, and democracy.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good but very short indeed July 25, 2008
The Very Short Introduction... series has several advantages over other series that serve the same function of providing an introduction to a subject matter. The main advantage is physical size. Mr. Clark refers to it as the perfect "plane" book. That's true. But even better, it is a true pocket book. They fit easily into the back of one's jeans waiting for the odd moment to be pulled out and used. They can usually be easily read in a couple of hours.
But that format has limitations. I find that the VSI volumes that are devoted to a single thinker are much more useful than the ones that cover a broad subject matter. (It inspires me to a bad pun. "A very short intro to a very big subject" is almost Oxfordmoronic. O, never mind.)
At best, when dealing with a subject matter as opposed to an individual thinker the VSIs are concise intros. But sometimes, as with the VSI to The Philosophy of Law the treatment seems shallow. Wacks is very good on some of his thinkers: Rawls, Dworkin, Hart, Weber, and Habermas are all fairly well done. Some of the others are not as well handled- I found his treatment of Locke, Marx, Foucault to be cursory at best. It felt like a survey of a survey.
So take it for what it is. This volume is a very quick overview of a lot of thinkers (see Mr. Clark's review for a good listing). Some of these thinkers are important enough to deserve their own volume in the series (Locke, Marx, and Habermas). Others like Rawls and Dworkin deserve such treatment. Prof. Wacks has provided us with a quick and cheap way to orient ourselves to future reading in this field. I just cannot help but feel that he could have done better. That if he had taken the time to flesh out his presentation for another fifty or so pages that it would have been a much more useful member of the VSI family.
 Short 'n' Sweet December 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a great way of summarizing the most important points of books like Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of law making studying a lot easier and a lot more effective. I recommend this book to any first year law students who can't understand, or don't have the time to read long and difficult books.
Small in Size but Big in Scope March 2, 2007
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
This book was my first introduction to the "Very Short Introduction" series of inexpensive paperbacks published by Oxford University Press. The nice thing is that these books measure about 7 X 4.5 inches, so they make the perfect "plane" books, but yet are produced to the strict standards of OUP. I was just amazed at how much solid analysis is contained in the 107 pages of text in this volume, not to mention the "references" section, bibliography, and complete index. The author, who is emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, has essentially boiled down his comprehensive "Understanding Jurisprudence" volume (OUP, 2005, 350 pages) into this concise survey. There are also 15 illustrations and several boxed pages where a particular point is examined in a minute analysis.
The book is divided into 6 chapters. The topics are Natural Law (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Finnis and Fuller); Legal Positivism (Hart, Bentham, Austin, Kelsen, Raz); Law as Interpretation (devoted to Dworkin); Rights and Justice (Hohfeld, Posner, Rawls); Law and Society (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Habermas, Foucault); and Critical Legal Theory (CLS, Unger, Lacan, Derrida, feminist legal theory, critical race theory). This is a lot to cover in a full-sized volume, but amazingly there is much solid analysis and discussion built into this small paperback. It is the perfect device for those wanting to refresh their familiarity with the jurisprudential field; it also serves as an effective and skillfully-written introduction for those new to the topic. There are many additional interesting titles in this Oxford series that I plan to explore--what a great idea!
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