Scott J. Shapiro is Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School.
Legality is the most important contribution about the nature of law
in recent years and a book that raises the bar for future work in
jurisprudence. With admirable clarity, Shapiro argues that legal
systems should not be understood simply in terms of rules, but
instead as highly complex tools for creating and applying plans.
His account offers an illuminating alternative to the literature
and challenges much received wisdom.
*Times Higher Education*
It cannot be doubted that Shapiro’s book, which clarifies and
advances analytical jurisprudence, is bound to be a classic
text.
*Jotwell*
[Legality] is a sympathetic, accessible, and highly readable
exposition of the theories that have preceded it. It is now one of
the best single-authored introductions to the subject. It is also a
significant contribution. Moreover, it is an apologia for the
subject itself, and for the method of conceptual analysis as a way
of uncovering the nature and grounds of law… Both as a defense and
example of analytic jurisprudence…this book is unrivalled.
*Jurisprudence*
This book is…imaginative, incisive, fair to interlocutors, and
written with elegance and wit… It is essential reading for
philosophers of law.
*Law and Philosophy*
I feel confident that Legality is one of the very best books in
general jurisprudence in many, many years… I suspect that Legality
will become a standard work for students of law and philosophy…
Everyone who engages in the academic study of law should read
Legality—it is that important.
*Legal Theory blog*
Rich and vibrant with jurisprudential ambition… There are lots of
riches in Scott Shapiro’s book… I have not been able to convey how
well this book is written or how much light the author is able to
shed along the way on various issues in the philosophy of law… It
shows that the idea of planning can indeed cast light on the
problems of jurisprudence without necessarily blinding us to other
analogies and other sources of insight.
*Michigan Law Review*
Scott Shapiro’s Legality is a rich and ambitious discussion of
law’s fundamental nature. Almost every page is provocative,
touching upon many of the most interesting, complicated and
controversial areas within this area of inquiry.
*Oxford Journal of Legal Studies*
Legality makes a contribution to the field that no student of
jurisprudence can ignore.
*Political Science Quarterly*
Shapiro has produced a work of enduring significance.
*Yale Law Journal*
Highly recommended.
*Choice*
A strikingly original, highly accessible, and well-worked-out
theory of the nature of law. Shapiro is on the positivist side, but
a tremendous strength of the book is that it engages deeply and
sympathetically with natural law and anti-positivist theorists.
Everyone serious about the philosophy of law needs to read this
book.
*Mark Greenberg, University of California, Los Angeles*
An outstanding contribution—almost certainly the most important
book on its topic since Dworkin’s Law’s Empire. Legality develops a
novel and forceful account of the nature of law, but the
engagements with other prominent accounts are so resolutely fair
and powerfully presented that, were I to suggest one book for
someone wanting to understand contemporary debates in
jurisprudence, this would be it.
*Arthur Ripstein, University of Toronto*
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