Methodology is central to all social science. However, legal scholarship too often focuses on the analysis of its objects - legislation, cases, and policies - without engaging closely with questions of method, beyond preliminary choices of relevant literature and theoretical framework. This chapter addresses the objects and methods of legal scholarship. It does so by analysing Marx and Engels’ observations on law under capitalism, specifically the sources of law, the rejection of artificial divisions in law, identification of the contradictions arising between a legal form and its material content, and the temporal primacy of facts over legal forms. The chapter thereby also seeks to recover the key elements of Marx’s method in Capital and other works.
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Front Matter
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Part I: MARX AND THE MARXIST TRADITION
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Part II: CONTEMPORARY MARXIST ANALYSIS OF LAW, RIGHTS, AND THE STATE
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Part III: FUTURE ORIENTATIONS OF MARXIST LEGAL ANALYSIS
