ABSTRACT
The conceptual resources surrounding contemporary law and legal theory are extensive and extremely diverse. This chapter considers a range of issues that have been evident (and growing) in legal theory for many years. Many of the issues concern the metatheoretical presumptions of legal theory. 'Restricted' legal theory has traditionally been limited by several factors: it looks mainly at the law of the nation-state, it constructs its theory from the perspective of an insider to this law but who is nonetheless regarded as capable of making objective pronouncements about it, and it takes a decidedly Western philosophical approach to the analysis of law. Unrestricted, general, or unlimited legal theory need not be constrained by the thought of unifying a legal field. Critical theory has produced an extensive appreciation of the ways in which law's conceptual boundaries are actively constructed and performed, and how they are intrinsically dynamic.
