The Rule of Law After the Short Twentieth Century

Though we operate at very great distances from each other and have met only a few times, my own intellectual sympathies, interests and concerns have overlapped closely with those of Roger Cotterrell, in areas both general and particular, for many years. Generally we are both drawn to what Philip Selznick has called an ecumenical view of social science, one that happily, with no sense of disciplinary guilt, encompasses philosophical, moral and legal concerns. More particularly, we share an interest in the thought of Selznick himself, ² and with him a view of sociology of law that is not just ecumenical but relentlessly (though not exclusively) contextual.