Law And Reflexive Politics

Law and Reflexive Politics argues against the dominant recent republicantrend in legal and democratic theory that sees law as the prime vessel ofpolitical actio... » 

Law and Reflexive Politics argues against the dominant recent republicantrend in legal and democratic theory that sees law as the prime vessel ofpolitical action means of empowerment of civil society and guarantor ofdemocratic politics. Against theorists as diverse as Dworkin Habermas UngerAckerman and others it argues that the law cannot as these theorists wouldhave it contain the politics of civil society and exhaust what these politicsare about. The first part of the book explores the recent trends in legal andpolitical theory that suggest the internal linking of democracy and law. Thesecond part is a critique of these positions through an application of systemstheory but one that offers an internal critique of systems theory itself aswell as a study of the interrelationships between law politics and conflict.The final part advances a suggestion for a definition or reconceptualisationof the political as reflexive that will repoliticise laws rendering ofconflict political action and identity. What is stilled by the law herebecomes contested terrain again and as such political. «