Law’s Images of Society
Legal philosophy has helped to provide lawyers with images of the society they are supposed to serve and of their place in it. Law students, whether or not they formally study legal theory or legal philosophy, absorb in one way or another, and at many levels of legal discussion and analysis, much of these images of the profession, its role, and its environment. Legal philosophy often does no more than rationalise, at the highest levels of generality, currents of thought that pervade the professional environment of law. Lawyers think in terms of legal philosophy in some sense whether they know it or not. This chapter tries to support arguments about a dichotomy between two legal views of law's social environment and about the significance of this dichotomy by using illustrations of judicial rhetoric drawn from recent case law in England and the United States.
Keywords: legal philosophy, images, society, case law, lawyers, social environment, judicial rhetoric, England, United States
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .