Properties of Law Modern Law and After Law in Context Series

Properties of Law is a legal-theoretical analysis about modern state law; about sociality, normativity and plurality as its properties, and what will come after modern state law. The main objective of this study is to offer a legal theoretical recapitulation of modern state law that avoids the fallacies of Legal Positivism. This calls for a relationist approach where law's sociality is related to normativity, and normativity to sociality. Avoiding Legal Positivism's fallacies also includes refraining from extrapolating from modern state law to law in general; replacing Legal Positivism's conceptual universalism with sensitivity to the varieties of law, and acknowledging that law existed before modern state law, that it will exist after modern state law, and that other law exists alongside modern state law. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of digitalization on law.

Part I. Sociality: 1. Return of the repressed; 2. Social practices; 3. Socio-legal practices; 4. Specialized legal practices; 5. Legal discourse; Part II. Normativity: 6. Specificities of legal normativity; 7. Layers of law; 8. Orders of law; 9. Morality of law; 10. Constitution; Part III. Plurality: 11. The black-box view; 12. Non-state law; 13. From simple diversity to interlegality and pluralism; 14. Unity under post-national plurality; Epilogue: Incertitude.

Kaarlo Tuori is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Finland. He has led a Centre of Excellence in European Law and Polity, financed by Academy of Finland, 2008–2013, and has served as a counsellor to the Constitutional Law Committee of Parliament and as a Member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (1998–).