Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T02:16:19.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The struggle for law: some dilemmas of cultural legality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

Roger Cotterrell
Roger Cotterrell*
Affiliation:
FBA, Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory, Queen Mary, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

My title ‘The Struggle for Law’ is that of a book by the nineteenth-century German jurist Rudolf von Jhering (1915). In fact a better translation of Jhering’s original German title (Der Kampf ums Recht) might be ‘the struggle around law’ or ‘the battle for rights’. He argued that citizens owe a moral duty to themselves and their society to assert legal rights vigorously. But law itself is above the fray, not subservient to their conflicting interests. So the struggle for law is not to control it but to invigorate it – to be involved in the legal order, an active citizen living under law. Jhering presupposed a cultural unity – ‘our whole culture’ (Jhering, 1913, pp. 59, 62). Given this unity, law can respond not only to citizens’ claims but to their feelings – feelings that are understandable in the shared culture law inhabits.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 373 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swidler, Ann and Tipton, Steven M. (1996) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, updated edn. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berolzheimer, Fritz (1912) The World’s Legal Philosophies, trans Jastrow, R. S.. Boston: Boston Book Company.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger (1995) Law’s Community: Legal Theory in Sociological Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger (1999) Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger (2003) The Politics of Jurisprudence: A Critical Introduction to Legal Philosophy, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger (2006) Law, Culture and Society: Legal Ideas in the Mirror of Social Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger (2007) ‘Images of Europe in Sociolegal Traditions’, in Gessner, V. and Nelken, D. (eds) European Ways of Law: Towards a European Sociology of Law. Oxford: Hart, 21–39.Google Scholar
Cotterrell, Roger and Arnaud, André-Jean (2007) ‘Comment penser le multiculturalisme en droit?’, L’Observateur des Nations Unies (Association française pour les Nations Unies – Section Aix-en-Provence) 23: 7–26.Google Scholar
Duxbury, Neil (2007) ‘Jhering’s Philosophy of Authority’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 27: 23–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald M. (1986) Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald M. (1989) ‘Liberal Community’, California Law Review 77: 479–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Lon L. (1969) The Morality of Law, revised edn. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Peter (1990) Languages of Law: From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. (1994) The Concept of Law, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Jhering, Rudolf von (1913/1999) Law as a Means to an End, trans Husik, Isaac. Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange reprint.Google Scholar
Jhering, Rudolf von (1915/1997) The Struggle for Law, trans Lalor, J. J.. Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange reprint.Google Scholar
Kohler, Josef (1914/1969) Philosophy of Law, trans Albrecht, A.. South Hackensack, NJ: Rothman reprint.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Postema, Gerald J. (1986) Bentham and the Common Law Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Poulter, Sebastian (1998) Ethnicity, Law and Human Rights: The English Experience. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raes, Koen (1996) ‘Communicating Legal Identity: A Note on the Inevitable Counterfactuality of Legal Communication’, in Nelken, D. (ed.) Law as Communication. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 25–44.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph (1998) ‘Multiculturalism’, Ratio Juris 11: 193–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel (2007) ‘Immigration and the Significance of Culture’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 35: 93–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shah, Prakash (2005) Legal Pluralism in Conflict: Coping with Cultural Diversity in Law. London: Glasshouse.Google Scholar
Shah, Prakash (2007) ‘Rituals of Recognition: Ethnic Minority Marriages in British Legal Systems’, in Shah, P. (ed.), Law and Ethnic Plurality: Socio-Legal Perspectives. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 177–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. (2006) Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van hoecke, Mark (2002) Law as Communication. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1948) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. W.. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1968/1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, trans Fischoff, E.et al. Berkeley: University of California Press reprint.Google Scholar
White, James Boyd (1990) Justice as Translation: An Essay in Cultural and Legal Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Witteveen, Willem (2005) ‘Interpretive Communities and Symbolic Effects’, in Zeegers, N., Witteveen, W. and van Klink, B. (eds) Social and Symbolic Effects of Legislation under the Rule of Law. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon, 317–38.Google Scholar