Toward a New Legal Common Sense

Boaventura de Sousa Santos has written and published widely in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Chinese, Danish, Romanian and Polish. His current research interests are epistemology, sociology of law, post-colonial theory, democracy, interculturality, globalization, social movements and human rights. Recent publications include The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018).

• Preface to the Third Edition; Preface to the Second Edition; 1.The Tension between Regulation and Emancipation in Western Modernity and Its Demise; 2. Toward an Oppositional Postmodern Understanding of Law; 3. Legal Plurality and the Time-Spaces of Law: The Local, the National, and the Global; 4. The Law of the Oppressed: The Construction and Reproduction of Legality in Pasargada; 5. Globalization, Nation-States, and the Legal Field: From Legal Diaspora to Legal Ecumenism?; 6. Law and Democracy: The Global Reform of Courts; 7. On Modes of Production of Social Law and Social Power; 8. Law: A Map of Misreading; 9. Can Law Be Emancipatory?; Postface as Disquietude.

'The 1985 edition of this book was a pioneering work on globalisation and law; it inspired some, and stimulated or challenged many others. The second version (2003) involved substantial revision and was less optimistic; this new edition reflects many changes in the world and the author's agonised reactions to them. As before, it is bold, incisive and imaginative. It revisits his classic works on Pasagarda, Recife and mental mapping and adds new analyses of pluralism, court reform, epistemologies of the south and an agonised commentary on recent global trends and crises. Tempered by twenty more years of social activism, mainly in Latin America, the author's essential vision survives intact. This is essential reading for anyone interested in law from a global perspective.' William Twining, Emeritus Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London