Methodology of Legal Theory

Introduction

The last decade has witnessed a particularly intensive debate over methodological issues in legal theory. The publication of Julie Dickson's Evaluation and Legal Theory (2001) was significant, as were collective returns to H.L.A. Hart's Postscript to The Concept of Law. While influential articles have been written in disparate journals, no single collection of the most important papers exists.

This volume - the first in a three volume series - aims not only to fill that gap but also propose a systematic agenda for future work. The editors have selected articles written by leading legal theorists, including, among others, Leslie Green, Brian Leiter, Joseph Raz, Ronald Dworkin, and William Twining, and organized under four broad categories:

• problems and purposes of legal theory;
• the role of epistemology and semantics in theorising about the nature of law;
• the relation between morality and legal theory;
• the scope of phenomena a general jurisprudence ought to address.