Dialogue and Debate Seizing the Law: 25 Years of Images of Law
| Author | Lindsay Farmer,Emilios Christodoulidis,Scott Veitch |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100303 |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
DIALOGUE AND DEBATE
SEIZING THE LAW: 25 YEARS OF
IMAGES OF LAW
SOME 25 YEARS ago Ban´kowski and Mungham’s Images of Law argued
that the then current practice and teaching of law meant oppression and
desolation. It contended that attempts to liberalize law – to give law a
human face – were destined to fail since the images of freedom they provided
did not grapple with the reality of enslavement to and by the law.
Images of Law was an influential book: widely read, reviewed and
discussed. A quarter of a century later, what remains of the future of the
radical project outlined by the book? To what extent has legal education been
transformed by critical theory and practice? Are the style and form of such
theorizing merely time-bound, period fashions? Has political economy, for
example, inevitably lost its theoretical and practical currency? And what
images of law now dominate our understandings of legal theory, practice and
education? In short, do the ideas expressed in the book, and the movement
of which it was an expression, have any force or contemporary relevance?
These were the questions that contributors to a workshop at the
University of Edinburgh in June 2001 were asked to address.1The contribu-
tors included several people who had been contemporaries or colleagues of
Ban´kowski and Mungham at the time the book was being written, or who
had commented on or reviewed the book when it was first published. These
were together with a number of scholars of a younger generation who had
been either taught or influenced by Ban´kowski and Mungham. The discus-
sions were organized around the themes of legal practice and education, the
politics of law, and epistemology and power.
The papers that form the basis for this symposium are derived from the
discussions and debate that took place over the two days of the meeting. They
offer up a series of reflections and challenges for contemporary legal theory
and critical legal studies, as well as offering an ample demonstration of the
continuing relevance of the theoretical position set out in Images of Law to
the project of legal scholarship and education.
Emilios Christodoulidis, Lindsay Farmer and Scott Veitch
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200209) 11:3 Copyright © 2002
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 11(3), 369–370; 027066
1. The organizers gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the British
Academy and the Law Schools of the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
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