Adjudication in Action describes the moral dimension of judicial activities and the judicial approach to questions of morality, observing the contextualized deployment of various practices and the activities of diverse people who, in different capacities, find themselves involved with institutional judicial space. Exploring the manner in which the enactment of the law is morally accomplished, and how practical, legal cognition mediates and modulates the treatment of cases dealing with sexual morality, this book offers a rich, praxeological study that engages with 'living' law as it unfolds in action. Inspired by Wittgenstein's later thought and engaging with recent developments in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Adjudication in Action challenges approaches that reduce the law to mere provisions of a legal code, presenting instead an understanding of law as a resource that stands in need of contextualization. Through the close description of people's orientation to and reification of legal categories within the framework of institutional settings, this book constitutes the first comprehensive study of law in context and in action.

Contents: Introduction: a grammar of law in context and action; Part I Law and Morality: Bases of a Praxeological Approach: Law and morality: constructs and models; The morality of cognition: the normativity of ordinary reasoning; Law in action: a praxeological approach to law and justice. Part II Law in Context and in Action: Law in context; legal activity and the institutional context; Procedural constraint: sequentiality, routine, and formal correctness; Legal relevance: the production of factuality and legality. Part III A Practical Grammar of Legal Concepts: From law in the books to law in action: Egyptian criminal law between doctrine, case law, jurisprudence, and practice; The natural person: the contingent and contextual production of legal personality; The production of causality: a praxeological grammar of the use of causal concepts; Intention in action: the teleological orientation of the parties to criminal cases. Part IV Praxeological Study of Judgments on Morality: Morality on trial: structure and intelligibility of the court sentence; Questions of morality: sequential, structured organization of the interrogation; The categories of morality: homosexuality between perversion and debauchery; Conclusion: the morality of judgment and the judgment of morality: a praxeological approach; Bibliography; Index.