The Cultural Study of Law

Belief in the rule of law characterizes our society, our political order, and even our identity as citizens. The Cultural Study of Law is the first full examination of what it means to conduct a modern intellectual inquiry into the culture of law. Paul Kahn outlines the tools necessary for such an inquiry by analyzing the concepts of time, space, citizen, judge, sovereignty, and theory within the culture of law's rule. Charting the way for the development of a new intellectual discipline, Paul Kahn advocates an approach that stands outside law's normative framework and looks at law as a way of life rather than as a set of rules.

Paul W. Kahn is the Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and Humanities at Yale Law School. He is the author of The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America, Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theor, and, most recently, Law and Love: The Trials of King Lear.