Jirí Pribán's book contributes to the field of systems theory of law in the context of European legal and political integration and constitution-making. It puts recent European legislative efforts and policies, especially the EU enlargement process, in the context of legal theory and philosophy. Furthermore, the author shows that the system of positive law has a symbolic meaning, reflecting how it also contributes to the semantics of political identity, democratic power and moral values, as well as the complex relations between law, politics and morality.

Jirí Pribán's book contributes to the field of systems theory of law in the context of European legal and political integration and constitution-making. It puts recent European legislative efforts and policies, especially the EU enlargement process, in the context of legal theory and philosophy. Furthermore, the author shows that the system of positive law has a symbolic meaning, reflecting how it also contributes to the semantics of political identity, democratic power and moral values, as well as the complex relations between law, politics and morality.

The law is a symbolic construction and therefore rests on a variety of undertakings. What gives law its meaning is,for some, ideology, for others, the welfare of the majority. However, what is manifest is a conception of the law as a material structure that carries symbols of everyday life. The analyses that are made in the law and semiotics movements show that the laws symbolism cannot be understood by reference only to itself, a strictly legal meaning. It is a symbol that conveys life, a symbol that in itself is contaminated with life, politics, morality and so on. Law and Semiotics is an obvious meeting point between traditions, because it is the place where all the discussions about the law can find a common language. This is a collection of different papers where the institution of the law is investigated, in combination with, and as part of, a multiplicity of sign systems. Firstly, law can be understood as part of a global system of meaning (Part I) ; and, secondly, that despite the homogenising threat of globalisation, the play of legal meaning retains a socio-historical specificity (Part II). The global issues of human migration, human rights, colonisation and transnational power are played out in local spaces, in the public discourses through which they are given localised representation, in moments of activism, and as a tool of subversion. The law is a rhetorical device which at once constitutes these global and local truths but which is also constituted by them.

This analysis deals with Old Testament law in the form of legal symbolic acts, defined as non-verbal acts which fulfil a legal function when performed under the proper circumstances and when the legal function is different from the physical result of the act. Legal symbolic acts belong to customary law. Since the customary law of ancient Israel is not as well-known as the codified law, these acts provide important information regarding the customary law of ancient Israel. Legal symbolic acts are also conventional, i.e., they are not so much dependent upon their performance for their meaning as upon the general agreement attached to the acts by those who form the surrounding socio-cultural context. This invites a contextual approach to the texts in which the acts are described. Such a contextual approach also restricts the use of comparative material to an illustrative function. Only when the literary context cannot be used to conclude whether it is a case of a legal symbolic act or not, will the comparative material be used in a further, explanatory sense. The analysis focuses on the three aspects of performance, legal function, and historical explanation, and includes the following acts: raising the hand, shaking the hand, putting the hand under the thigh, walking through a divided animal, sharing a meal, piercing the ear of a slave, anointing the head with oil, grasping the horns of the altar, transferring the mantle, covering a woman with the mantle, removing the sandal, and putting a child on the knees.

García-Villegas compares the scholarship on the relationship between law, political power, and society in the United States and France.

This book describes the rule of law as the reign of persuasion rather than the reign of force, and democracy as the reign by persuasion rather than the reign by force. It synthesizes a vast amount of current Cassirer-literature and makes a contribution to jurisprudence. The book is the first systematic elaboration on law as a symbolic form and it sheds new light on a still dark area of intellectual and jurisprudential thought.