Toward a New Jurisprudence?

Date01 September 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12369
Published date01 September 2018
AuthorSean Coyle
bs_bs_banner
REVIEW ARTICLE
Toward a New Jurisprudence?
Sean Coyle
Roger Cotterrell,Sociological Jurisprudence: Juristic Thought and Social
Inquiry, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, xiv +256 pp, pb £23.99.
In this major new book, Roger Cotterrell refines and considerably extends an
approach to jurisprudence that he has been developing for decades. Arguing
against the tradition of thinking that regards jurisprudence as a self-contained,
philosophical subject, he offers an invitation to regard the subject in a new
way: as a ‘theoretical tool’ directed ‘solely towards helping jurists fulfil their
practical professional tasks’ (xi). This sociological jurisprudence, then, is not
a conversation between philosophers but a resource to be used ‘magpie-like’
in an effort to ‘make law work’: a kind of bricolage, not really an academic
subject at all (4, 45). This reorientation of the subject is directly related to the
emergence of forms of transnational law, explored deeply and persuasively in
the second part of the book (75-155). These new forms, scarcely intelligible
as law on most traditional definitions, not only prompt the jurist to give up
received understandings of the nature of law, but ‘[destabilise] any idea that law
has some “true”, essential or timeless nature that philosophy could reveal . . . ’
(76). This is given special urgency in the face of what the author calls ‘global
legal pluralism’, the ‘diversity and polycentricity of transnational regulation’
(89n). At times, the book’s response to this crisis verges on pragmatism: a
concept of law is less about making a claim to truth, than about ‘organising
efforts towards solving specific problems . . . ’ (99).
The extended treatment of transnational legal regulation is flanked by two
other main parts: the first dealing with ‘the juristic point of view’, and the
second with ‘legal values’. In what follows I will draw principally upon the
discussion in these two parts of the book, and will be concerned with four
central questions raised by that discussion: (1) the nature of jurisprudential
inquiry; (2) the notion of law ‘as an idea’ (54); (3) the book’s moral relativism;
and (4) individualism and social solidarity.
JURISPRUDENCE
A sociological jurisprudence must pay attention to the shifting context in
which the law exists (xii). Such shifts render problematic the idea that one
University of Birmingham.
C2018 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2018 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2018)81(5) MLR 906–919
Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT