Jurist in Context: A Memoir

Jurist in Context: A Memoir

This is the engaging and accessible intellectual memoir of a leading jurist. It tells the story of the development of his thoughts and writings over sixty years in the context of three continents and addresses the complexities of decolonisation, the troubles in Belfast, the contextual turn in legal studies, rethinking evidence and the implications of globalisation which have been central to his life and research. In propounding his original views as an enthusiastic self-styled 'legal nationalist', Twining maps his ideas of law as a unique discipline, which pervades all spheres of social and political life while combining theory and practice, concepts and values, facts and rules in uniquely fascinating ways. Addressed to academic lawyers generally and to other non-specialists, this story brings out the importance and fascinations of a discipline that has changed, expanded and diversified in the post-War years, with an eye to its future development and potential.

Provides a historical perspective and intimate account of the development of law as a discipline in common law countries over sixty years
Offers a distinctive view of jurisprudence that challenges some mainstream ideas and practices while providing an integrated approach to legal theorising
Explores fundamental ideas about rules, values, concepts, evidence, standpoints, problems, reasoning and social facts, as well as the implications of globalisation for law and jurisprudence

Table of Contents:

1. Jurisprudence: a personal view

2. Childhood and schooling (1934–52)

3. Oxford and after (1952–57)

4. University of Chicago I (1957–58)

5. Khartoum (1958–61)

6. Dar-es-Salaam (1961–65)

7. Llewellyn again: American interludes (Chicago 1963–64

Yale 1965

Philadelphia 1971)

8. The Queen's University Belfast (1966–72)

9. Normative jurisprudence

10. Standpoint, questioning, and 'thinking like a lawyer'

11. Social and legal rules

12. Warwick (1972–82)

13. Jurisprudence, law in context, realism, doctrine

14. Rethinking evidence

15. Bentham's College (1983–99)

16. Four contrasting relationships (Bentham, Dworkin, MacCormick, Anderson)

17. Legal education

18. Globalisation and law

19. General jurisprudence

20. Retirement

Notes on the images

Endnotes.