Jurisprudence & legal theory: Commentary and materials

It is no easy exercise to teach or study jurisprudence or legal theory today, which is perhaps indicated by the use of both 'jurisprudence' and 'legal theory' in the title to this book. Although at a very general level this subject can be characterised as the activity of producing theories about law, 'jurisprudence' now includes a large variety of such theories - many of them highly sophisticated, some with a long history of elaboration and refinement, and all to a greater or lesser extent at odds with each other. Moreover; the body of writings, which tend to be gathered together under the heading of jurisprudence, is related in complicated ways to other theoretical traditions that are not primarily concerned with the law at all, but with justice,; morality or ethics; language; culture; the economy; power; or society in general. The readings offered to you in this book reflect that complexity. This book is directed toward those who have been studying law for at least a year or two without exploring the interconnectedness between its various subject areas and these other traditions. The readings presented here will expose you to arguments an terminology that may bear little relationship to anything you will have read before. You should not however conclude that these materials are separated by such a large distance from everything else that you have studied so far on your degree course that jurisprudence is akin to a foreign language. Nor should you treat it as a subject which has no practical relevance whatsoever to learning the law, and one which you will never (you hope) need to consider again. Jurisprudence should not leave you with the general impression that jurisprudential or theoretical talk about law is attractively 'deep and meaningful', but impenetrable to all but the professional scholar, and ultimately irrelevant to the routine study and practice of law. However, he fact that some students are left with such negative impressions is at least partially a result of the available teaching material which, we believe, could ne made more accessible and coherent. Our response is this book.