Methodology in Private Law Theory

Abstract This groundbreaking book is a must-read for anyone interested in private law theory. Building upon established traditions of scholarship in German private law, and harnessing resurgent scholarly interest in private law in the United States, this volume memorializes a first-of-its-kind dialogue between leading lights in German and American private law theory. Probing the methodological precepts that underlie scholarly movements on both sides of the Atlantic, the chapters in Methodology in Private Law Theory: Between New Private Law and Rechtsdogmatik invite readers to question how private law fosters, invites, channels, and shapes reasoned engagement with private law doctrines and institutions while at the same time encouraging reflexive consideration of diverse ways in which methods of legal analysis influence social practices in which law is given, received, asserted, and negotiated. Leading methodologies of the past and present are subject to fresh elucidation and insightful criticism, including those of legal formalism, legal conceptualism, legal realism, law and economics, legal philosophy, legal history, empirical jurisprudence, Rechtsdogmatik, and other varieties of doctrinal scholarship.