This multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional collection offers the
first ever full-scale analysis of legal fictions. Its focus is on
fictions in legal practice, examining and evaluating their roles in a
variety of different areas of practice (e.g. in Tort Law, Criminal Law
and Intellectual Property Law) and in different times and places (e.g.
in Roman Law, Rabbinic Law and the Common Law). The collection
approaches the topic in part through the discussion of certain key
classical statements by theorists including Jeremy Bentham, Alf Ross,
Hans Vaihinger, Hans Kelsen and Lon Fuller. The collection opens with
the first-ever translation into English of Kelsen's review of
Vaihinger's As If. The 17 chapters are divided into four parts: 1) a
discussion of the principal theories of fictions, as above, with a focus
on Kelsen, Bentham, Fuller and classical pragmatism; 2) a discussion of
the relationship between fictions and language; 3) a theoretical and
historical examination and evaluation of fictions in the common law; and
4) an account of fictions in different practice areas and in different
legal cultures. The collection will be of interest to theorists and
historians of legal reasoning, as well as scholars and practitioners of
the law more generally, in both common and civil law traditions.