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4 - A Political Economy of Contemporary Legality

from Part I - Studying the Law of Political Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2020

By
Duncan Kennedy
Edited by
Poul F. Kjaer
Poul F. Kjaer
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
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Summary

The chapter starts with an observation: contemporary élite jurists pursue, vis-à-vis one another, a “hermeneutic of suspicion”, meaning that they work to uncover hidden ideoogical motives behind the “wrong” legal arguments of their opponents, while affirming their own right answers allegedly innocent of ideology. The rise of the hermeneutic of suspicion is a striking manifestation of the contemporary transformation of the relationship between legal élites and political economic élites. This transformation accompanies and corresponds to the progressive juridification, judicialisation and finally constitutionalisation of the contemporary social order.

Keywords

sociology of lawlegal historycritical legal studiesjuridificationjudicialisationconstitutionalisationhermeneutic of suspicion.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Law of Political Economy
Transformation in the Function of Law
 , pp. 89 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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