Jurisprudence is
the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists
(including legal philosophers and social theorists of law), hope to obtain a
deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems
and of legal institutions. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and
was focused on the first principles of the natural law, civil law, and the law
of nations.[1] General jurisprudence can be broken into categories both by the
type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence,
or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best answered.
Contemporary philosophy of law, which deals with general jurisprudence,
addresses problems in two rough groups:[2]
1.) Problems
internal to law and legal systems as such.
2.) Problems of
law as a particular social institution as it relates to the larger political
and social situation in which it exists.
Answers to these
questions come from four primary schools of thought in general
jurisprudence:[2]
Natural law is
the idea that there are rational objective limits to the power of legislative
rulers. The foundations of law are accessible through human reason and it is
from these laws of nature that human-created laws gain whatever force they
have.[2]
Legal positivism,
by contrast to natural law, holds that there is no necessary connection between
law and morality and that the force of law comes from some basic social facts
although positivists differ on what those facts are.[3]
Legal realism is
a third theory of jurisprudence which argues that the real world practice of
law is what determines what law is; the law has the force that it does because
of what legislators, judges, and executives do with it. Similar approaches have
been developed in many different ways in sociology of law.
Critical legal
studies is a younger theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s
which is primarily a negative thesis that the law is largely contradictory and
can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of the dominant
social group.[4]
Also of note is
the work of the contemporary Philosopher of Law Ronald Dworkin who has
advocated a constructivist theory of jurisprudence that can be characterized as
a middle path between natural law theories and positivist theories of general
jurisprudence.[5]