Alan Norrie
Biographic Data
| ID | 4587032 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Norrie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Norrie |
| SIGNATURE | NORRIE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1205-5282 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 71 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
On Civil Order in Happy Valley Criminal Justice and the Vindicatory Complex
This is a case study of how civil order is fashioned and made morally plausible. It focuses on the first series of the BBC crime drama Happy Valley . In this moral tale of modern criminal life, criminal justice, central to the modern civil order, is organised around law's ‘vindicatory complex’. This semi-organised, structural problematic renders plausible an account of criminal justice and civil order as an ethical whole yet is organised around a…
RogerCotterell, Jurisprudence and Socio‐Legal Studies
Critical realism and criminal justice
I explore here how critical realism supports development in a particular field of study and how it is itself enhanced in the process. Motivated by research on rethinking criminal justice, I first sketch the criminal justice argument around the ‘penal equation’, two kinds of ‘atonement’, a ‘mature retributivism’ and a deep or tendential abolitionist position on punishment. Sections then focus on (1) critical realism and varieties of critique, incl…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Critical Realism and Criminal Justice
In 2024, Warwick Law School hosted the 26th Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism. The essays in this dedicated Special Issue stem from the conference and conversa
Rethinking Criminal Justice
For 200 years, the penal equation 'crime plus blame equals punishment' has meant prison crises, a permanent crime problem, violent and damaged lives. The retributive theory of punishment supports this; fully developed, it could transform it. A moral psychology of violation distinguishes primitive and mature retributivism, explaining punishment's necessary failure and guilt, forgiveness and reconciliation's power. 'Atonement' means both punitive '…
Dialectical critical realism, complexity and the psychology of blame
This essay considers the question of how to frame social complexity from the point of view of critical realism as it was developed in the direction of dialectics by Roy Bhaskar. One of the main objectives of dialectical critical realism (DCR) was to see dialectics as offering a more open and flexible way of handling social reality. I begin by outlining the main aims of DCR and its general orientation, before outlining some key concepts which affo…
Symposium on The Space That Separates
The symposium on The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art (Wilson, 2020) presents commentary and critical reflection from five leading contributors to critical realism. In response, Nick Wilson suggests that where there is disagreement it may well arise from a misunderstanding over the object of study. Rather than focusing on artworks, artists, artforms, and the arts, The Space that Separates re-directs attention towards universal but to…
Stratified explanation and Marx's conception of history
Economic science without experimentation / Abstraction
Realism and formalism in ethics
Dialectical critical realism and ethics
Reason as dialectic
Philosophy and scientific realism
The power of negative thinking
The praxiology of legal judgement
Between structure and difference
Realism and social science
Abstraction
Critical realism and dialectic
Realism and social science
Neutrality in the social sciences
Conceptual and natural necessity
Facts and values
Introduction
Explanation and emancipation
Dialectic and Difference
Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice. That philosophy has three aims: a dialecticisation of original critical realism, a ‘critical realisation’ of dialectic, and a metacritique of western philosophy. In the first, real absence or negativity links structured being to dialectical becoming in a dynamic world. The second draws on Marx to locate…
Introduction
Realism, dialectic, justice and law
In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist community. He also discusses the role of law in society, law’s relation to philosophy, and his various related research interests over the years. This extends to his most recent work on moral psychology and the underappreciated connection between metaphysical …
From Law to Popular Justice
Introduction
From Critical to Socio-Legal Studies
This article addresses the ‘gap’ between socio-legal studies and critical legal theory. Examining Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’, it argues that the fault lies as much with the latter’s marginalisation of the social and political character of the law as with the former’s narrow, policy-oriented character. Despite such marginalisation, deconstructive concepts such as supplementarity and différance are important and ought to be preserved for a critical s…
A Fateful Inversion
The Limits of Justice
Explanation and emancipation
Consensual Authoritarianism' and Criminal Justice in Thatcher's Britain
The impact of Thatcherism on the criminal justice system may be understood in terms of two apparent paradoxes. The first is that of continuity and change, so that while there have been significant developments in the direction of authoritarian forms of rule under Thatcherism these developments cannot be viewed in isolation from previous periods of British history. Thus, while Thatcherism is authoritarian, it is inaccurate to identify authoritaria…
Dialectical critical realism, complexity and the psychology of blame
This essay considers the question of how to frame social complexity from the point of view of critical realism as it was developed in the direction of dialectics by Roy Bhaskar. One of the main objectives of dialectical critical realism (DCR) was to see dialectics as offering a more open and flexible way of handling social reality. I begin by outlining the main aims of DCR and its general orientation, before outlining some key concepts which affo…
Facts and values
Introduction
Four concepts of social structure
Introduction
A realist social science
Love in Law’s Shadow
Modern theory of punishment conflates two types of question. The first concerns the justification of state punishment, the second the moral damage that occurs when a person is violated, and how the resulting damage can be repaired. The first question leads to political theory and a particular legally based moral grammar of wrongdoing and punishment. The second goes in the direction of a different moral psychology involving a grammar of violation,…
The Grounds of Law
Dialogue and Debate
Consensual Authoritarianism' and Criminal Justice in Thatcher's Britain
The impact of Thatcherism on the criminal justice system may be understood in terms of two apparent paradoxes. The first is that of continuity and change, so that while there have been significant developments in the direction of authoritarian forms of rule under Thatcherism these developments cannot be viewed in isolation from previous periods of British history. Thus, while Thatcherism is authoritarian, it is inaccurate to identify authoritaria…
Law, Ideology and Punishment
Law, Ideology and Punishment
A Critique of Criminal Causation
Closure or Critique
In this book, Norrie tackles the many diverse theoretical traditions within modern law which force legal theorists to ask complex philosophical questions about the basis of law and its relationship to society, morality and ethics. Norrie's focus around the issue of either closure (the presentation of law as an autonomous rational phenomenon) or critique (the denial of autonomy, rationality and formalism) allows the reader to consider such questio…
From Law to Popular Justice
The Limits of Justice
Dialogue and Debate
A Hardship Defence
Contract Law and Legal Theory
From Critical to Socio-Legal Studies
This article addresses the ‘gap’ between socio-legal studies and critical legal theory. Examining Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’, it argues that the fault lies as much with the latter’s marginalisation of the social and political character of the law as with the former’s narrow, policy-oriented character. Despite such marginalisation, deconstructive concepts such as supplementarity and différance are important and ought to be preserved for a critical s…
The Nature of Virtual Criminality
Critical Reaalism
From Criminal Law to Legal Theory
The modern idea of criminal justice is organised around a series of antinomies which include the formal and the substantive, the universal and the particular, the individual and the social. This paper examines the place of these antinomies in four different but connected settings: the plight of the humane judge, the classical enlightenment theory of retributive punishment, the judgment of provoked killing, and the critique of orthodox subjectivis…
Dialogue and Debate
A Fateful Inversion
A Fateful Inversion
The Grounds of Law
Bhaskar, Adorno and the Dialectics of Modern Freedom
Through dialectical critical realism, Roy Bhaskar has made an important contribution to two different theoretical traditions. One is the philosophy of critical realism, where he aims for a more supple and reflexive approach. The other is dialectical theory, which he seeks to undergird and recast by locating on a realist terrain. Here an important question is how recasting affects existing dialectical thought. Bhaskar's own writings focus in this …
Bhaskar, Adorno and the Dialectics of Modern Freedom
Through dialectical critical realism, Roy Bhaskar has made an important contribution to two different theoretical traditions. One is the philosophy of critical realism, where he aims for a more supple and reflexive approach. The other is dialectical theory, which he seeks to undergird and recast by locating on a realist terrain. Here an important question is how recasting affects existing dialectical thought. Bhaskar's own writings focus in this …
The New Dialectic and Marx's ‘Capital’. By Christopher J. Arthur
Dialectic and Difference
Dialectic and Difference is the first systematic exploration of Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical philosophy and its implications for ethics and justice. That philosophy has three aims: a dialecticisation of original critical realism, a ‘critical realisation’ of dialectic, and a metacritique of western philosophy. In the first, real absence or negativity links structured being to dialectical becoming in a dynamic world. The second draws on Marx to locate…
The Scene and the Crime
This essay argues that critical realism provides a philosophical perspective from which to talk about good and evil. It draws on dialectical critical realism's meta-ethics of freedom and solidarity, and the different grades of freedom identified there: from the basic spontaneity in agency to the possibility of a fully flourishing, eudaimonic social condition. It argues that evil acts can be understood as those which fundamentally deny basic human…
Law, Ideology and Punishment
Who Is ‘The Prince’
This article compares the dialectics of Fredric Jameson and Roy Bhaskar. From a dialectical critical-realist standpoint, it argues that Jameson’s approach in his recent collection Valences of the Dialectic sits uncomfortably between Hegelian and Marxist presuppositions. This is seen in the way he configures the relation between thinking and being, and it leads to an alliance with poststructuralist thinking in which real negativity is denied. In c…
Philosophy (45 works) · Epistemology (43 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Political science (35 works) · Law (28 works) · Critical Realism in Sociology (24 works) · Realism (20 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Criminology (16 works) · Dialectic (16 works)