The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship

Belief in the rule of law characterizes society, political order and even one's identity as a citizen. Yet despite the importance of this phenomenon, those who study culture have failed to focus on the law. In this work, Paul Kahn provides an examination of what it means to conduct a modern intellectual inquiry into the culture of law. He explains the shortcomings of late-1990s legal scholarship and charts the way for the development of a new discipline of law, one that approaches law as a way of life rather than a set of rules. Kahn argues that legal scholars, despite the appearance of some sophisticated theory in modern legal scholarship, are bound to the idea of improving the law through reform. The state of legal scholarship can be compared to the study of religion around the turn of the 20th century, when it was a part of the practice of religion and not a distinct intellectual discipline as it is today. Kahn outlines the conceptual tools and methodology necessary for such an inquiry. Drawing on modern cultural studies, he analyzes the concepts of time, space, citizen, judge, sovereignty, and theory within the culture of the rule of law.