John Finnis has been a central figure in the fundamental re-shaping of legal philosophy over the past half-century. This volume of his Collected Essays shows the full range and power of his contributions to the philosophy of law. The volume collects over twenty papers: on the foundations of law's authority; major theories and theorists of law; legal reasoning; revolutions, rights and law; and the logic of law-making. The essays collected include Finnis' recent appreciations and root-and-branch critiques of Hart's legal and political theories, his engagements with other central figures and works in the field, including Dworkin's Law's Empire; Raz on authority and coordination; Coleman, Leiter and Gardner on legal positivism and naturalism; Aquinas as founder of legal positivism; Weber on the fact-value distinction and legitimation; Unger on indeterminacy in law; Posner on intention and economics; Kelsen and courts on revolutions; game-theory and rational-choice theory; with misinterpreters of Hohfeld on rights logic; John Paul II on voting for unjust laws; the architecture of Blackstone's Commentaries; restitution in civil wrongs; and many other aspects of law and legal theory. Previously unpublished papers include two on critical or post-modern legal theory - one on analogical reasoning in law, and a survey of legal philosophy's history and current of development. An introduction carries forward the debate with his contemporaries, and the reflections on how legal philosophy got to where it is.

约翰·菲尼斯系牛津大学法学教授、大学院（university college）法理学研究员。是继已故美国法理学家富勒之后，驰名西方法学界的一位自然法哲学家。他的代表作《自然法与自然权利》(牛津大学出版社1980年第1版)被认为是“对自然法的权威性再表述”。