The Unity of the Common Law

Countering the view that law is an incoherent mixture of conflicting political ideologies, this book forges a paradigm for understanding the common law as being unified and systematic. It applies Hegel's legal and moral philosophy to fashion a synthesis of the common law of property, contract, tort and crime. The book suggests a coherence that synthesizes several interrelated dichotomies: good-centred and right-based legal paradigms, instrumental and non-instrumental conceptions of law, externalist and internalist interpretations of the common law system, and communitarian and individualistic attempts to found the legal enterprise. The book's unifying notion of common law corresponds to Hegel's notion of "Geist", suggesting a designation of the mutual dependence of the community and the atomistic self for their confirmation as ends.