Murphy, Roberts & Flessas, Understanding Property Law, 4th Edition (Sweet & Maxwell 2004)
Understanding Property Law provides a background to an area of law which is notoriously inaccessible. Standing back from their subject, the authors of this book elucidate how the practices of the past have shaped the development and form of the modern law. In doing so they stress the role of lawyers in the transactions - such as sale, gift and inheritance - in which their clients become involved. This focus upon the work which lawyers do in their offices provides a necessary complement to the emphasis on legislation and adjudication found in most textbooks.
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The Oldest Social Science: Configurations of Law and Modernity (OUP, 1997)
This book looks critically at some of the underlying assumptions which shape our current understanding of the role and purpose of law and society. It focuses on adjudication as a social practice and as a set of governmental techniques. From this vantage point, it explores how the relationship between law, government and society has changed in the course of history in significant ways. At the centre of the argument is the elaboration of the notion of `adjudicative government'. From this perspective it is argued that the relationship between law and society must be conceived in a different way in the era of economics, sociology and statistics. The impact of these disciplines both constitutes `modernity' and unfolds a different role for law. The author argues that the traditional vision of the role of law, rooted in a complex set of hierarchical assumptions, is no longer adequate.
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