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72/73 Law & Just. - Christian L. Rev. 46 (1982)
Reviews

handle is hein.journals/ljusclr72 and id is 48 raw text is: LAW & JUSTICE Reviews LEGAL PHILOSOPHIES by J. W. H A R R I S, 1980 London, Butterworth. pp. 273 + preface pp. 2 + table of abbreviations pp. 2 + index pp. 8: paperback £5.95. There has been a good deal of work in the field of legal philosophy and jurisprudence appearing recently from Oxford lawyers. J. M. Finnis' book on Natural Law and Natural Rights; Joseph Raz' various writings, notably his The Authority of Law; various collec- tive works on legal theory; and of course Professor H. L. A. Hart's great work on The Concept of Law; have formed part of an un- broken stream of publication. So much so that one begins to wonder if there is anything fresh to say about law in theory, and wouldn't it be better to get down to a bit of law in practice? Naturally there are also many interesting new works on legal theory from other parts of the United Kingdom and the United States. Any author inserting himself in this flood must therefore seek a novel topic or a novel angle. Dr. Harris' book does not seek to be novel in theme, but it can fairly claim to be relatively novel in approach. His market and his aim are precisely defined. His intention is to provide the starting student with a clear guide to the main topics in a jurisprudence or legal theory course, and to a selection of the celebrated authors, from Aristotle through to Rawls, who have written significantly on one or other of these topics. In the result, he offers the student a very usable textbook on legal theory (which is more than the un- digested gobbits of too many jurisprudence books) consisting as it does both of exposition of doctrine and coherent and developed comment. If in one sense there is little original in the material, the result - to this student at any rate - is both stimulating and practically useful. But it would be wrong to take this as a mere student book. The views of Dr. Harris, generally judicious and well balanced, on some of the large questions which he tackles, are, always useful, and frequently challenging. One may segregate out first of all those topics which really form part of an English legal theory course: statutory interpretation (chapter 12), precedent (chapter 13) and legal reasoning (chapter 15). A substantial proportion of what remains examines the relation-

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