Bjarne Melkevik,Philosophie du droit, t. 1, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010, 649 p., ISBN 978-2-7637-8952-1.

In Philosophie du droit, published in 2010 by Les Presses de l’Université Laval, Professor Bjarne Melkevik brings together the most important contributions that he has made in the recent years to various themes of legal philosophy. The author does not focus on any particular theoretical problem of law in this work : rather, he is concerned with the overall state of “intellectual sanity” in contemporary jurisprudence. From this perspective Professor Melkevik analyses not only the state of affairs in the Western legal tradition, but also some pivotal theoretical problems arising in relation to traditional and non-Western legal cultures. The central task of this book is to reveal the key elements of juridical modernity (modernité juridique) which characterize the classical (Western) style of legal thinking and which are nowadays under relentless attack from postmodernism. In the first part of the book, Professor Melkevik examines the philosophical aspects of self-determination of peoples, multiculturalism, solidarity, and the right to life, to a healthy environment, democracy, etc., offering the reader his considerations on these controversial issues of jurisprudence. Along with these articles, the volume includes several texts where Professor Melkevik analyzes the ideas of two authors who have had a key influence over his conception of law : Eugeny Pashukanis and Jürgen Habermas (compared with the conception of John Rawls). The volume begins by reflecting on the central tasks of legal philosophy, which is not surprising given the overall theme of the book. The first two articles “Thinking of law in a philosophical manner” (our translation, p. 9-21) and “The concept of law and contemporary philosophical reflection” (our translation, p. 23-32) focus on different philosophical approaches to law. From the positivist standpoint, legal philosophy can be considered as a useless set of metaphysical abstractions ; on the other hand, from a natural law perspective this discipline gains overwhelming importance, to the point where law as a social regulator risks being replaced by philosophical reflections concerning the principles of its regulation. Following Habermas, the author suggests that there can be an alternative perspective – that of philosophy of action where law is conceived as an emerging compact of collective and individual acts and opinions (p. 20). Here law is closely linked to choices between values, the verification of hypotheses and other mental acts through which human beings participate in the project of juridical modernity ; i.e. to create for themselves a system of coordinates to place the different models of behaviour along the axis law/non-law. A careful examination of the key conceptions of law allows a restatement of the structure of this system as it exists in every human society. Professor Melkevik does not make an apology for the analytical philosophy of law, but calls for a more subtle study of the existential axis around which human beings arrange their discussions about law. Instead of focusing exclusively on legal concepts, he wants to include various aspects of human culture into his inquiry (religion, metaphysics, ecology, politics…) and show how they can be important for the philosophy of law. In the author’s opinion, these disciplines have a particular place among the other legal disciplines because of the wide scope of their research domain. Are there any fixed landmarks to differentiate philosophy of law from other disciplines of law ? Professor Melkevik is convinced that everything that human beings can glean for carrying out the project of juridical modernity will ultimately be important for the philosophers who study law. But is usefulness the only criterion ? The author elaborates this subject in the two following articles “Is nature a subject of law ? A philosophical …