Full Description
Analytical jurisprudence often proceeds with two key assumptions: that all law is either contained in or traceable back to an authorizing law-state, and that states are stable and in full control of the borders of their legal systems. What would a general theory of law be like and do if these long-standing presumptions were loosened? The Unsteady State aims to assess the possibilities by enacting a relational approach to explanation of law, exploring law's relations to the environment, security, and technology. The account provided here offers a rich and renewed perspective on the preconditions and continuity of legal order in systemic and non-systemic forms, and further supports the view that the state remains prominent yet is now less dominant in the normative lives of norm-subjects and as an object of legal theory.
Contents
Introduction; Part I. Preparing Analytical Theory for New Challenges: 1. Pulling off the mask of law: a renewed research agenda for analytical legal theory; 2. Making old questions new: legality, legal system, and state; 3. Legal systems and presumptions of unity and validity; 4. The elements of legal order; Part II. Law, Environment, Security, and Technology: 5. Globalization, the predictions of legality, and law's relation to environment; 6. Legality, security, and Leviathan's ghost; 7. Information communication technologies and legal theory; 8. Beyond the unsteady state.
