Belief in the rule of law characterizes our society, our political
order, and even our identity as citizens. The Cultural Study of Law is
the first full examination of what it means to conduct a modern
intellectual inquiry into the culture of law. Paul Kahn outlines the
tools necessary for such an inquiry by analyzing the concepts of time,
space, citizen, judge, sovereignty, and theory within the culture of
law's rule. Charting the way for the development of a new intellectual
discipline, Paul Kahn advocates an approach that stands outside law's
normative framework and looks at law as a way of life rather than as a
set of rules.
Professor Kahn's perspective is neat and alluring: We need a form of
legal scholarship released from the project of reform so that we can
better understand who and what we are. The new discipline should study
'not legal rules, but the imagination as it constructs a world of legal
meaning.' . . . [C]oncise, good reading, and recommended. --New York
Law Journal