Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Frederick Schauer was the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia and the author of Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry; Playing by the Rules; Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes; Thinking Like a Lawyer; and The Force of Law. He was a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard University for twenty years, and was a founding editor of the journal Legal Theory.Modern jurisprudence has been devoted to a search for law’s necessary and sufficient conditions and has downgraded the importance of coercion, which is neither. However, Fred Schauer makes a convincing case for coercion’s importance in understanding law and legal phenomena. His treatment of the topic is erudite, comprehensive, rigorous, and even witty, and it is delivered in a superb writing style.
- Lawrence A. Alexander, University of San Diego School of Law,
<i>The Force of Law</i> has the virtues of all of Schauer’s work: clear and accessible writing, the grounding of persuasive arguments on good examples and a wide range of scholarship, and fair consideration of opposing views. It is an important contribution to jurisprudential debates about the nature of law and about the proper approach to theorizing in this area.
- Brian H. Bix, University of Minnesota Law School,
Drawing upon language, moral, sociological, and economic theory, Schauer explores what makes legal norms unique and why and under what conditions individuals truly obey the law. He asserts that although coercion may not be the only reason people obey the law, often getting individuals to act in ways they would not normally act requires some type of force. This force need not necessarily be negative coercion as normally conceived but can involve an array of sanctions to condition behavior in specific ways.
- D. Schultz, Choice