Jurisprudence or legal science?

Sean Coyle, George Pavlakos

"Modern jurisprudence embodies two distinct traditions of thought about the nature of law. The first adopts a scientific approach which assumes that all legal phenomena possess universal characteristics that may be used in the analysis of any type of legal system. The main task of the legal philosopher is to disclose and understand such characteristics,which are thought to be capable of establishment independently of any moral or political values which the law might promote, and of any other context-dependent features of legal systems. Another form of jurisprudential reflection views the law as a complex form of moral arrangement which can only be analysed from within a system of reflective moral and political practices. Rather than conducting a search for neutral standpoints or criteria, this second form of theorising suggests that we uncover the nature and purpose of the law by...

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