Debating Finnis on Petrażycki: Nine Scholars in Dialogue on Legal Realism and Natural Law (Law and Philosophy Library, 152)

In this book, John Finnis provides a virtually unparalleled, in-depth assessment of Leon Petrazycki’s work by a Western scholar.In the opening chapter, Finnis takes up the challenge of reading Petrazycki not simply as a historical curiosity of Eastern European jurisprudence but as a thinker whose wide-ranging and ambitious ideas continue to spark debate today.He critiques not only Petrazycki’s non-standard “economic analysis of law,” which differs markedly from the Chicago School model (not to mention from Guido Calabresi’s and Pietro Trimarchi’s versions), but also many other aspects of Petrazycki’s various contributions to jurisprudence.These include, above all, his legal-realistic but nonetheless appreciative treatment of the natural-law tradition(s), which makes Petrazycki both distinctive and difficult to classify in terms of standard schools of thought. Finnis’ essay is followed by nine further contributions.Written by scholars from different traditions and standpoints, they crit