Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/9727
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- Title
- 'Customs in common' : the old emperor's clothes
- Related
- Macquarie law journal, Vol. 6, p.139-160
- Related
- http://www.law.mq.edu.au/html/MqLJ/volume6/09Stewart.pdf
- Publisher
- Macquarie University
- Date
- 2006
- FoR/RFCD Code(s)
-
180119 Law and Society
180122 Legal Theory, Jurisprudence and Legal Interpretation
180199 Law not elsewhere classified
- Author/Creator
- Stewart, Iain
- Description
- ‘Customs in Common’ has an old sweet scent – of apples dried in autumn for a midwinter bake, or of willow on leather through a balmy afternoon. ‘Our customs’, surely, are a nicer form of social regulation than the tank-backed norms of the state or the bank-backed norms of the market. The concept of custom, then, should be very attractive to socialists. One socialist who was so attracted was historian E P Thompson, from whom this volume’s theme is drawn. For him, however, the attraction quickly soured. I shall trace his path and his difficulty in theorising it. Then I shall examine ‘custom’ afresh, beginning at the effective origins of the western legal tradition in Constantinople. I will not consider ideas of ‘custom’ otherwise than as candidates for a popular mode of social regulation: hence I will not consider customary international law or customs of a trade or profession; nor the philosophers who used to conceive custom as a personal, habitual ‘second nature’. I shall conclude that the concept of ‘custom’ has long ceased to make sufficient sense for any scholarly or political purpose, and that the sense that it formerly made was a ready tool of oppression and but a blunt weapon of resistance.
- Description
- 22 page(s)
- Subject Keyword
- 180119 Law and Society
- Subject Keyword
- 180122 Legal Theory, Jurisprudence and Legal Interpretation
- Subject Keyword
- 180199 Law not elsewhere classified
- Subject Keyword
- E. P. Thompson
- Subject Keyword
- moral economy
- Subject Keyword
- common law
- Resource Type
- Macquarie Law Journal Collection
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Organisation
- Macquarie University. Dept. of Law
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/9727
- Identifier
- ISSN:1445-386X
- Identifier
- mq-rm-2006000525
- Language
- eng
- Rights
- Publisher version archived with the permission of the Dean, Division of Law, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia. This copy is available for individual, non-commercial use. Permission to reprint/republish this version for other uses must be obtained from the publisher.
- Full Text
- Reviewed
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