Book Review: Law and the Utopian Imagination (The Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought)
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| Author | Lynne Copson |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663917710975 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
AUSTIN SARAT, LAWRENCE DOUGLAS and MARTHA MERRILL UMPHREY (eds), Law and
the Utopian Imagination (The Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought). Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2014, pp. 200, ISBN 9780804790819, $75.00 (hbk).
Described in its introductory chapter as ‘a project of exploration and resuscitation’ (p. 2)
that ‘seek[s] to explore the possibilities of a productive engagement between the utopian
and the legal imagination’ (p. 2), Law and the Utopian Imagination presents an edited
collection in which a number of scholars consider the contribution utopianism may make
to the analysis of law and legal theory.
This is an engaging and original text that would be of particular interest to
advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as established aca-
demics, with interests in legal theory and utopianism. Its contribution, as the editors
highlight, is situated in a contemporary context that eschews utopianism as both
impossible and, potentially, dangerous. Reflecting a commitment to the instantiation
of a perfect society, from a liberal perspective, utopia has been seen to ‘pave[] the
way to totalitarianism’ (p. 1) from which the law is seen as necessary to provide
protection. Accordingly, utopia and liberalism have often been considered mutually
incompatible: where utopianism has ‘typically displayed hostility toward legal forms
and processes’ (p. 4) – notwithstanding those utopias that recognize a role for law in
maintaining harmony in the ideal society they propose – from a liberal standpoint,
law is considered ‘a necessary bulwark against the inevitable excesses of utopia’ (p. 6).
The consequence of this has been the rejection and neglect of utopian thought within
legal theory.
Against this backdrop, Law and the Utopian Imagination presents an attempt to
reinject utopian thought into legal theory and to challenge the seeming intractability
between utopianism and liberalism. Formed of a collection of essays by different
authors, a central theme that can be traced throughout the various contributions lies in
an attempt to negotiate this tension through an exploration of the relationships (both
actual and potential) between utopia and the law. This is done in various ways through-
out the different contributions to the collection and it is perhaps in this variety that
utopianism’s potential contribution to legal theory is most effectively articulated.
Specifically, having set the context in which the collection is situated in Chapter 1,
each of the subsequent chapters sees its respective author grapple with the question of
what the relationship between law and utopia is and offer a reimagining of this
relationship that challenges the apparent contradictions outlined in the first chapter.
Social & Legal Studies
2017, Vol. 26(5) 649–661
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663917710975
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