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The struggle for law: some dilemmas of cultural legality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

Roger Cotterrell
Roger Cotterrell*
Affiliation:
FBA, Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory, Queen Mary, University of London
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Abstract

My title ‘The Struggle for Law’ is that of a book by the nineteenth-century German jurist Rudolf von Jhering (1915). In fact a better translation of Jhering’s original German title (Der Kampf ums Recht) might be ‘the struggle around law’ or ‘the battle for rights’. He argued that citizens owe a moral duty to themselves and their society to assert legal rights vigorously. But law itself is above the fray, not subservient to their conflicting interests. So the struggle for law is not to control it but to invigorate it – to be involved in the legal order, an active citizen living under law. Jhering presupposed a cultural unity – ‘our whole culture’ (Jhering, 1913, pp. 59, 62). Given this unity, law can respond not only to citizens’ claims but to their feelings – feelings that are understandable in the shared culture law inhabits.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 373 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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