Dr Maks Del Mar was the Series Editor for a new 3-volume series on Contemporary Legal Theory that has just been published by Ashgate. Dr Del Mar explains:
'What are the new frontiers of contemporary legal theory? What new problems, new methods, and new objects of study do the next thirty years hold for legal theorists - and how can the last thirty years help us explore them? The three volumes in this series of Contemporary Legal Theory, Second Series, offer answers to these questions. In so doing, these three volumes build on, and complement, the volumes in the first series of Contemporary Legal Theory, (2010).
'Each volume in the series tackles the relationship between legal theory and another discipline: 1) legal history; 2) the humanities; and 3) the natural sciences. In each case, the co-editors have sought to identify the key themes at the intersection of these relationships - often also the key obstacles to collaboration between them. A special effort has been made not to assume that the relationship is or ought to be a collaborative one: for example, the volume on legal theory and legal history recognises that many (theorists and historians alike) have radically distinguished between the tasks of legal theory and legal history, and thus have been sceptical about the plausibility and fruits of any dialogue between them. Nevertheless, each volume has also attempted to move beyond territorialising in scholarship, and offered ways and examples of how productive dialogue is possible.
'The issues explored in these volumes are richly varied, as is appropriate given the specifics of each of the above relationships. Nevertheless, they constitute a coherent whole, for they mark the exciting changes that have taken (and are still taking) place in contemporary legal theory. Arguably, the future of legal theory lies not in the exclusive and illusory bastion of the law: it lies, at least in part, in law’s complex and dynamic relations with the past and the diverse ways in which we can explore it; with our aesthetic sensibilities and the bottomlessness of human imagination; and with the challenges posed to our most familiar evaluative concepts by the natural sciences. The papers selected in these volumes look squarely at the glare of these challenges.
The three volumes in the series are:
This new series follows on from the previous series, co-edited by Maks Del Mar and Michael Giudice.