Lord Kames - by Andreas Rahmatian (Paperback)

About the Book

Andreas Rahmatian explains Kames' conceptions of legal philosophy, including black-letter law, legal science, legal theory, legal sociology and anthropology in its early stages, setting them in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Book Synopsis

The Scottish jurist, judge, legal historian and philosopher Henry Home (1696-1782) took the title Lord Kames when he was elevated to the bench of the Scottish Court of Session in 1752. In the 18th century, his books were influential and widely read; the educated classes and representatives of the Enlightenment in England, France and in the German states were all familiar with his aesthetic and philosophical writings. Andreas Rahmatian explains Kames' conceptions of legal philosophy, including black-letter law, legal science, legal theory, legal sociology and anthropology in its early stages, setting them in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. He looks at how Kames came to be one of the forefathers of comparative law, sociology of law, legal psychology and 'legal science' in its proper meaning, as opposed to 'law'.
From the APF:
Portmahomack today is a serene fishing village on the Dornoch Firth, north east Scotland where archaeological excavations have written a new history of the origins of Scotland. This book brings alive the expedition and its discoveries, most famously a monastery of the eighth century in the land of the Picts.
Starting from chance finds of Pictish carved stone in St Colman's churchyard, the archaeologists unearthed four settlements one on top of the other. An elite farm was succeeded by the Pictish monastery, which, following a Viking raid in AD800, became a trading place and then a medieval village. Scientific analysis shows at each stage where the people came from, their life-style and what they ate. Together it creates a story of the heroic adaptation of a European nation to new politics between the sixth and sixteenth century.
The Picts were the outstanding sculptors of their day, producing carved stone monuments equal to anything being made in contemporary Europe. They were Britons, who resisted the Romans invaders and created their own warrior nation in the north east of the island. Coming under pressure from the Scots and the Norse, they disappeared from history in the ninth century AD. Now archaeology is finding them again.

Review Quotes

Andreas Rahmatian deploys multi- and inter-disciplinary skills worthy of the polymathic Kames himself, setting him in the context of eighteenth-century law and Enlightenment but also arguing that we should pay close attention to what his writings tell us today. The result is challenging new insight on the work of a remarkable jurist.-- "Hector L MacQueen, University of Edinburgh Law School"