Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain
Stanford University Press, October 1999
Posted: 16 Aug 1999
Abstract
'Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain' is the first book in English devoted to a comprehensive examination of the legal ideas of this classical social theorist. It sets out radically to challenge standard accounts of these ideas, drawing on a wide range of writings by Durkheim and his co-workers (including much material never translated into English). The book presents his legal thought as a unified, highly original and hitherto unjustly neglected contribution to the understanding of modern law. Durkheim seeks to uncover the moral foundations of Western law: he explains in relation to such fields as criminal, contract, property, succession, industrial and family law, the values that must underpin modern regulation, justifying these sociologically in terms of law's tasks and its historical development. The book also surveys the work of jurists who were closely involved in Durkheim's sociological project, but are little known in the common law world. Durheimian legal theory, according to this book's argument, is a rich, multi-facetted enterprise which, until now, has lacked proper recognition: more generally, many standard criticisms of Durkheim's sociology as a whole need substantial reconsideration in the light of his work on law.
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