Book Review: GEORGE PAVLAKOS, Our Knowledge of the Law: Objectivity and Practice in Legal Theory. Oxford: Hart, 2007, x + 267 pp. ISBN 1841135038, £48.00
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639090180040704 |
| Author | Jonathan Gorman |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 18(4)
but her critique of the settlement is still attached to Anderson’s idea of ‘imagined
communities’. If the new regime appears paradoxical, that is related to the limits of
the monist methodology adopted to analyse it. Similar epistemic limitations can be
found on the third substantive part. Her account of the post-9/11 New Zealand
policies on immigration and religious minorities could be considered paradoxical only
if the identity-formation process is explained from an ideological (national) perspec-
tive. However, from a theoretical point of view, the narratives associated with global
terrorism and mass immigration have simply made more obvious the limits of
adopting local (national or regional) outlook on the identity formation process.
In conclusion, Seuffert provides an informative historical analysis of the New
Zealand national identity process. Her analysis of the interplay between globaliza-
tion and identity formation is not fully formed, yet the critical account of the role of
judges in settling disputes (past and present) is powerful and convincing. Jurispru-
dence of National Identity provides an illuminating account of the gender implica-
tions of identity studies which will certainly attract the attention of other researchers.
As such, the book is an overdue addition to the literature.
VITO BREDA
University of Cardiff, UK
GEORGE PAVLAKOS, Our Knowledge of the Law: Objectivity and Practice in Legal
Theory. Oxford: Hart, 2007, x + 267 pp. ISBN 1841135038, £48.00.
Return to 1952 Oxford: Ludwig Wittgenstein, lately dead at Cambridge, influential
particularly through Elizabeth Anscombe; J. L. Austin, claiming independence from
Wittgenstein’s influence, similarly requiring that philosophy should involve exact
attention to the ordinary uses of language. In that year H. L. A. Hart, a fellow spook
with Austin during the war, came from his previous chancery bar work to the Oxford
Chair of Jurisprudence. He was not, as might in advance perhaps have been supposed,
merely a consumer of Oxford linguistic philosophy intent on applying it to law, but
a major producer of it in his own...
To continue reading
Request your trial