Emile Durkheim (Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory)

Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain is the first full-length account in English of Durkheim's ideas on law. Radically challenging standard accounts of these ideas, it draws on a wide range of writings by Durkheim and his co-workers to present his legal thought systematically as a unified, highly original and hitherto unjustly neglected contribution to the understanding of law. Durkheim confronts issues about the moral foundations of contemporary Western law. He explains in relation to such fields as criminal, contract, property, inheritance, industrial, and family law, the values that must underpin this law, justifying these sociologically in terms of law's modern tasks and its historical development. Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain also surveys the work of jurists who were closely involved in Durkheim's sociological project, but are little known in the common world. It shows Durkheimian legal theory as a rich, multi-faceted enterprise which, until now, has lacked proper recognition. Addressing many standard criticisms of Durkheim's sociology, Professor Cotterrell shows that some of these need substantial reconsideration in the light of Durkheim's work on law.* Accessible account of the whole of Durkheim's writing about law in society * Shows the centrality of Durkeim's legal theory to his social theory as a whole * Reveals Durkheim as a highly original and instructive theorist of law * Does not presuppose prior familiarity with Durkheim's sociology or with legal theory