Scott Veitch, ”Obligations: New Trajectories in Law” (Routledge, 2021)

Obligations: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge, 2021) critically analyses the role that obligations play in law and social ordering. As rights have become preeminent feature in modern societies, the work that obligations do has faded into the background. However, in his latest book, Professor Scott Veitch challenges the normative assumptions that shape law and social practices, and shows how obligations and practices of obedience are core to sustaining the inequalities faced by members of the global community. In doing so, Veitch explores the potential and enduring role that obligations have in furthering individual and collective well-being. He offers an alternative trajectory for the current crises faced by all citizens today, including environmental degradation and human inequality and injustice. 

This is an important book. It will allow the reader to rethink the dominant model of human rights, and enable understandings of alternative complementary trajectories of obligations. An understanding of the universalism of obligations and the asymmetries and obediences that obligations create has the potential to better prioritise human and environmental needs, common goods, and solidarity. 

Professor Scott Veitch is the Paul K C Chung Professor in Jurisprudence in the Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was educated in Scotland and has worked at universities in Australia and the United Kingdom, and was formerly Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow. He has held visiting academic positions in South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium, France and the Basque country. His area of research is jurisprudence broadly defined, and his work draws on historical, philosophical and sociological insights into law and legal institutions.

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