Law and Legal Theory in England and America

Abstract

This book explores the relationship between the legal systems of the UK and USA. The chapters in this volume range widely over themes. The first chapter compares the work of the two most prominent writers on jurisprudence in the second half of this century, one English (H. L. A. Hart) and one American (Ronald Dworkin). The chapter has a controversial conclusion that trying to define ‘law’ is futile, distracting, and illustrative of the impoverishment of traditional legal theory. The second chapter examines a number of English cases drawn primarily from the two fields in which English and American law overlap most completely — torts and contracts. Here the chapter argues that while in general English judges use their common sense effectively to approximate the results that an economic analyst would recommend they would do even better if they were more receptive to the economic approach to the common law — if they were, in other words, a little more like American judges. The next chapter examines the differences between the English and American legal systems at the administrative or operational level as distinct from the jurisprudential and doctrinal levels. The conclusions drawn from this analysis challenge traditional orthodoxy. The concluding advice to law reformers in both jurisdictions is that piecemeal reform of either system is to be avoided.

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