Mootz offers an antidote to the
fragmentation of contemporary legal theory with a collection of essays arguing
that legal practice is a hermeneutical and rhetorical event that can best be
understood and theorized in those terms. This is not a modern insight that wipes
away centuries of dogmatic confusion; rather, Mootz draws on insights as old as
the Western tradition itself. However, the essays are not antiquarian or merely
descriptive, because hermeneutical and rhetorical philosophy have undergone
important changes over the millennia. To "return" to hermeneutics and rhetoric
as touchstones for law is to embrace dynamic traditions that provide the
resources for theorists who seek to foster persuasion and understanding as an
antidote to the emerging global order and the trend toward bureaucratization in
accordance with expert administration, violent suppression, or both.
