Author Description

"Polycentricity is defined when neither law nor justice are structured around a centre, in relation to which all legal and ethical norms can be founded. Undermining the fundamental notions of law, polycentricity demonstrates the inadequacy of current legal paradigms. In the first significant study of polycentric law, the contributors to this volume map the indeterminacies of legal theory and address the possibility of legal and ethical alternatives and political counterstrategies. The concepts of law and justice are questioned from epistemological, political and ethical perspectives. Among the key issues covered are the ways in which legal interpretation should be understood; whether jurisprudence understands itself; what comes after the deconstruction of law; the relationships between law, justice and politics; and whether legal polycentricity is an ethical demand. Polycentricity is devoted to the philosophical investigation of the phenomena of law and justice and provides openings to polycentric legal theories by both deconstructing the idea of unity in law and re-constructing ethical differences. Reflecting this central theme of multiplicity, the collection is itself polycentric in approach"--Unedited summary from book cover