Half Title Page -- Half Title verso -- Title Page -- Title verso -- General Editor's Preface -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Note on Abbreviations -- 1. An Opportunity to Reflect -- 2. Max Weber's Science of Social Action -- 3. Hart's Nucleic Expository Theory -- 4. Three Gordian Knots -- 5. Perspectives Redefined -- 6. "Reductionism" Reassessed -- 7. Relationality Reconsidered -- 8. Towards a Critical Legal Positivism -- Index.
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This book develops the rudiments of a sociological perspective on state law and legal theory. It outlines a distinctive approach to theoretical enquiry that offers an improved understanding of law as a social and institutional phenomenon. The book draws upon Max Weber's sociological and juristic writings as a context in which to explore themes arising or selectively developed from a critical reassessment of key aspects of H.L.A. Hart's theory of law. The discussion initially centres around three problematical areas or 'Gordian Knots': essentially weaknesses in the analytical nucleus of The Con.