Martin Krygier receives Deslie Mahoney Prize in legal theory

UNSW Law Professor and RegNet Honorary Professor Martin Krygier has been awarded the prestigious Dennis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory. Martin won the award for a number of articles from the past five years on the rule of law and his book Philip Selznick: Ideals in the World, published by Stanford University Press in 2012.

The prize, awarded by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney, goes to the author or authors who have best advanced Stone’s sociological and justice-oriented approach to jurisprudence.

“Julius Stone was a great pioneer-advocate of the need to bring legal scholarship into fruitful interaction with the learning and insights of the social sciences and philosophy, both to increase our understanding of the law and to serve justice,” Martin said.

“My mentor, Philip Selznick, sought similarly to develop an ‘ecumenical’, more specifically ‘humanist’ social science, that melded philosophy, social science, and law, and sought both to illuminate and to guide.

“I cannot hope to fill the shoes of either of these giants, but we are all fortunate to have their example, to be able to stand on their shoulders, and also to follow in their footsteps. That is what I have tried to do.”