Talk:Jurisprudence

Embarrassing
Frankly, this is one of the most embarassingly bad entries on anything to do with law or philosophy in all of Wikipedia. But, as many of the notes below complain, the problem is knowing just where to begin. Start over entirely, I guess. Or just give links to something from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I'm not sure. Almost none of the definitions are correct; the whole emphasis is quirky; the most significant and influential writers are either not mentioned or misunderstood (Aquinas, Bentham, Austin, Kelsen, Hart, Fuller, Raz, Dworkin, would be a start.) Maybe ppl who know the subject would be willing to take on chunks? Then perhaps we could think of trying to put it into reasonable English. I made a start on the first para. Would someone knowledgeable about the modern natural law tradition in Simon, Finnis, Fuller and Soper please correct the mistakes in the existing material.

1] No, jurisprudence is not definable as simply "the law." --LMS


 * It certainly can be and often is without offering more. It is not enough to state what it is not, one must state then what it is!  - RB

Somebody might want to look at the punctuation in this page (do a search for '?' in your browser to see what I mean). I'm not sure if someone edited the page in Word, but there seems to be errant question marks (possible apostrophes?); in addition, some sentences seem to lack ending punctuation. -- Notheruser 22:20 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

2] I agree with the opinion gave in wikipedia for 'jurisprudence', but it could be interesting to note or to add, that in continental and latinamerican contexts, 'jurisprudence' also means some stream of opinion prevaling in tribunals. For example, we says that "according to the prevaling jurisprudence contractants ought to...", o "according with the dominant jurisprudence [or the jurisprudence followed by this court] the article 14 of our constitution means...". [O. Sarlo, Montevideo, 08/02/2004)

The lead section of this article should probably be cleaned up according to wikipedia style (specifically having only two or three paragraphs before the Table of Contents). --Interiot 22:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This article needs a lot of work. I am going to edit it drastically because it falls so far short of how an encyclopedic entry for jurisprudence should. It is going to take ages. --Never29 00:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This article states some "incorrect" uses of the term jurisprudence that are not incorrect at all. Seeing them as incorrect is a result of merging jurisprudence and philosophy of law.  Philosophy of law is, indeed, one meaning for jurisprudence, but so is "Knowledge of or skill in law." (first OED entry) "The science which treats of human laws (written or unwritten) in general" (second OED entry  - which is listed as equivalent to "philosophy of law" and "A system or body of law; a legal system." (the second meaning of the term in the OED).  I submit that jurisprudence qua philosophy of law is a subset of jurisprudence in general, and that there are many jurisprudential subjects that philosophers won't touch upon (such as the rationale of particular laws).


 * Yes, you are right. I've deleted that passage, don't know when it popped up. It was wrong, and there's a disamiguation link at the top to show for it, because the jurisprudence of the courts is a way of saying case law. It seems that the person who put it in also had something against European law. Ignorance produces prejudice perhaps! That said, you could have simply done the same yourself. Be bold in editting!  Wik idea  00:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Definition
Would an expert PLEASE write a better definition of "jurisprudence" than:

"It is a historical, social, and cultural movement with the inherent contradiction that analysis of the law and understanding of its politics will unravel and reveal the 'truth' behind legal reasoning and the exercise of legal power, even while at the same time admitting there is no such thing."

The existing definition doesn't make sense. Subversive 03:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've rewritten this in a way that I think is both clearer and more reflective of what jurisprudential scholars/philosophers of law actually think they are doing. Metamagician3000 01:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the challenge involves defining it outside the context of any particular legal system. That being said, perhaps if the articles on "philosophy of law" and "legal theory" were concurently amended to reflect the distinctions between these three areas the current page would be much improved. In short, much of the article addresses topics and authors in the field of philosophy of law. I suggest the following view be taken as an arbitrary framework from which a topical structure can be derived from knowledge of the field. Philosophy of law address the social requirement for law (nominal and actual), identifies probands for the ascertainment legal systems, and (if your philosophy includes a moral component) it identifies the measures whereby legal values are weighed (and thereby the ends of law). Legal theory is an essentially structuralistic approach to understanding concepts in the nature of law; the nature of law becomes the object rather than a subject of the discourse. Therefore the fact that "law" is terms of art which nonetheless encompasses distinct but well-founded domains of discourse has to be emphasized. From this perspective (less than categorical, I admit) law can be understood to refer in several terms to the social custom, the practice of law, the underlying social value system, and finally the (presumably) common understanding of law as an imperative justified in terms of particular goals. Finally, jurisprudence should be explained in terms of practice; from the standpoint of judges, but affected by the interests of justice system participants (which judges necessarily appreciate in practice). An intro to jurisprudence is the concept of juridical thought; that is interpretation of the instruments of law as a nominal framework from which a common undertstanding ("common sens") is realisec in ideal terms. Jurisprudence can be understood in the same sens as it is used in common law, inclusive of doctrine. It underpins, critically examines, and acts upon juridical thought. Hope this helps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwerty2001 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Please can this article be augmented to show that:


 * 1) 'Law' is passive metaphorical construct based on two equally-opposing concepts of just cause;
 * 2) 'Jurisprudence' in mathematics is a Class 3 Scammel Period Table which is known in the State Of Japan as an 'Ouija Board';
 * 3) A 'Judas Erasmus Walrus' (JEW) is a mainline Locum Law Judge (known in the USA as (LLJ));
 * 4) The whole law, once assembled, is the 50 United States Constitution resalable in the 50 United States Dollar (USD);
 * 5) 'Susandiction' the process of 'sue'ing somebody, is a military process borne by equal share through third-party constitutions.

Without these clarifications the article looks like something out of the stone age. The 'Law' article is worse, however.194.61.223.53 (talk) 14:30, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Positivism
The definition and discussion of positivism really described an extreme theory that is not held by any theorist in recent times. I doubt that even someone like Austin believed something this crude. I have rewritten this to give a better indication of what is believed by leading positivists such as H.L.A. Hart. Metamagician3000 01:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Natural law - No Locke?
Actually, the discussion here is also a bit of a caricature. I've made a first attempt at rewriting it. It should be noted that modern natural law and positivist theories often converge on many points. The differences can be more ones of degree. E.g. a positivist can find much that is useful in the claims made by Fuller. Metamagician3000 01:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Why is Thomas Hobbes mentioned here and not John Locke? The two are inteimately connected, and also unique. Locke merits his own sections, imo. 69.178.122.114 (talk) 22:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Dooyeweerd?
The emphasis on Dooyeweerd's work - a relatively obscure Christian philosopher - is not justified. Major philosophers of law - contemporary or not- (e.g.Grotius, Hart, Raz, Dworkin, Austin, etc.) are not mentioned.


 * Well, edit boldly. I made a start some time back, but didn't get very far. Yes, the article needs to discuss those, and other major jurisprudential thinkers. Metamagician3000 14:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello @Metamagician3000, I'd like to improve this page, but to improve the page I need to start by improving the talk page as it is not even reasonable to understand what the articles issues are right now. I'd like to make a "Resolved" section on this talk page and move your comment there since your comment has been addressed. Czarking0 (talk) 15:18, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @Czarking0 this comment is from 2006, so it's definitely not relevant anymore ;) Look at the bottom of this page for the newest comments--everything at the top is over a decade old. Alyo  (chat·edits) 15:38, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Merging
Reasons to merge:

1. There is no difference between 'jurisprudence' and 'philosophy of law' - it's really the same thing generally, and only little fiddly differences could be conjured up

2. Both articles cover broadly similar topics - they talk about positivism and natural law, although there are strengths in some bits and not others, e.g. the philosophy of law page has a useful list of authors; or the jurisprudence page has an interesting stub referring to islamic jurisprudence User:Wikidea


 * Forgot that perhaps the talk page from philosophy of law is needed to be merged too!!Wikidea 01:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion brought from Philosophy of Law page
The original article didn't seem like nonsense, so much as a woefully inadequate stub (or, worst case, a dictionary entry). There really is such a thing as a "philosophy of law" (just do a search in Google and see how many responses come back), and while "A system of values that informs a legal system" doesn't do the topic justice (no pun intended), and the definition wasn't so much nonsense as dictionary-like.

Right, philosophy of law is a well-established branch of philosophy. The definition given was completely inadequate as a definition of this philosophical subdiscipline; as a philosophical subdiscipline, it's not a "system of values" at all, or only in the most tenuous of senses. Hence, nonsense. --LMS

Au contraire. Unlike the grand concept of philosophy, a philosophy of "law" cannot exist without a "system of values" because the very word "law" comes with core defined assumptions about its meaning.

The current revisions aim to flesh out the article, which is still inadequate. There is a need for more discussion of legal positivism, especially the work of H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz. More discussion of natural law theory is needed, especially the work of John Finnis. There should be individual entries on various topics in substantive areas such as contract theory, tort theory, etc., as well as summaries of those entries in the philosophy of law entry. Lot's of work here.

I think something should be said of the effect that post-modernism has had on legal thinking. Deconstruction and other concepts relating to literary analysis and power relationships have been applied to the law to good effect. I could add something but it wouldn't be that complete, I didn't understand it that well in my "history and philosophy of law" class :) Psychobabble

I'm looking for an explanation of facts in the natural world and facts in the legal world. Clearly they are not the same as the rules governing what is accepted as fact in science is very different from that in law. Mulp 6 July 2005 23:46 (UTC) - I think an essential aspect of the nature of the philosophy of law is greatly neglected in the article. The philosophical debate as to the role of 'reason' within law, presented in such works as Aristotle's 'The politics' and Thomas Hobbes' 'A dialogue between a philosopher and a student of the the common laws of England'. 'Law is reason free from passion'; the debate on the matter is that there is a rational basis of law, i.e. law is informed by reason and cannot be law if it conflicts with reason. However the problemwith such a statement is that to reduce law to only reason would ope the way to disobedience on the part of man (and these can be many, who claims to be more reasonable than is the law itself. Thus the hard case is put: If law is reason and reason alone generates law, then law gains greatly in dignity but loses its own nature; for it is of the nature of law to commandthat it comport with obedience; but a command whose authoritativeness begins and ends with the reasonableness of the command will not, by its nature, procure obedience, for it is of the nature of reason to be always open to question.

21/08/2005, 16:33 GMT []

- I removed the citations of Dworkin's Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality and Mark Tushnet's Red, White and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law. These are both excellent works, but they hardly fit the definition of philosophy of law given by the article. Nor would any legal philosopher say they were works in philosophy of law. Sovereign Virtue is a work in political philosophy. Red, White and Blue is a work in constitutional theory.

-- Agreed. I've corrected the mistakes in the positivism section. The errors in the Natural Law section now also need to be fixed. Could someone who knows the contemporary literature (especially Finnis, Alexy, and Murphy) try to do this.


 * The Dworkin book does fit into jurisprudence - I've been reading it of late for another purpose, and I'd say it is definitely "doing" philosophy of law as well as political philosophy (hey, it's most unclear where one ends and the other begins). The Tushnet book I am less familiar with, but from what I know of it I agree - more a book done from within the field of law than one looking at it from a more philosophical perspective. Or at least so it seems to me. Metamagician3000 08:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Merging
Reasons to merge:

1. There is no difference between 'jurisprudence' and 'philosophy of law' - it's really the same thing generally, and only little fiddly differences could be conjured up

2. Both articles cover broadly similar topics - they talk about positivism and natural law, although there are strengths in some bits and not others, e.g. the philosophy of law page has a useful list of authors; or the jurisprudence page has an interesting stub referring to islamic jurisprudence User:Wikidea


 * I agree that they are the same thing, and I'm not opposed to a merge - though I'm also not all that strongly in favour because my view that they are the same thing might be contested by some thinkers. Metamagician3000 05:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Which thinkers do you have in mind? I agree, that there are always going to be some that want to draw a distinction. But it's probably true that the leading ones - Dworkin, Hart, Raz, Finnis, etc, have always taught them as the same, right? Besides, the articles' contents are pretty identical. User:Wikidea


 * I said "might" because I don't particularly have anyone in mind. As I say, I agree they are the same thing. I guess I sometimes see legal theory texts that might count as jurisprudence but are not written by philosophers, and there may be questions about where philosophy of law begins and where the theoretical study of substantive legal doctrine or of sociology of law ends - and how much some of these other things count as being part of "jurisprudence". For what it's worth, though, when I did a jurisprudence subject at Law School we were told that "jurisprudence" is just a fancy word for philosophy of law ... and that's how I still think of it. Yes, I consider Dworkin, Hart, Finnis, Raz, blah, blah to be philosophers of law and jurisprudential scholars, and the terms to be interchangeable when applied to them. :) Metamagician3000 14:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have not yet read it, but if anyone is interested in exploring this more, there is an article about this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/raju.12185 Weagesdf (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

More alterations
Might it be a good idea to structure the page by philosophers, rather than by the 'schools' that they belong to? It makes more sense to look at one person at a time maybe?Wikidea 01:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

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Bad Latin
Its a small point, but the latin is not juris, its iuris. There's no Classical Latin "j", it doesn't appear until well into the Middle Ages. Ellinor127 (talk) 09:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Changing "A iudex" to "An iudex" seems overly pedantic. Or is it just meant to be said quickly?Wikiain (talk) 22:41, 13 August 2010 (UTC)


 * If you're going to change every j to an i for the sake of spelling Latin as Cicero* did instead of the way it's often, perfectly legitimately, spelled today, consistency demands that you use us ;-) instead of vs in louuercase, and Vs instead of Us in VPPERCASE.
 * Anyone reading the article to find out about jurisprudence will find iurisprudentia more confusing than enlightening, at least till they figure it out or shrug and give up on it... unless they know (something about) Latin, in which case "jurisprudentia" won't surprise them because they already know about the purely orthographic change.
 * * rather, as Tiro did
 * It's not just pedantic, it's wrong. See first part of my reply, to Ellinor127. Latin "j" (only ever seen before a vowel) or "i" (when before a vowel) represents the sound of English "y" in the word "you" or "yes".
 * Thnidu (talk) 18:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

?? Equitative?
Does "Equitative" mean anything? I cannot even guess what it is supposed to mean in this article!Jezza (talk) 17:47, 18 July 2009 (UTC) yes sir i agree with u its nat a litin word — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.68.97.164 (talk) 15:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

english jurisprudence
contains definitions,meaning,scope,purpose,LAW,its kinds,Different theories of law,advantages and disadvantages of law —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.31.36 (talk) 04:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Introduction
The intro here doesn't make sense to me. Natural Law is a theory of jurisprudence, not an area of investigation in the same sense that the other categories are. I have made a tentative edit using this as a source: http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/Jurisprudence JFQ (talk) 13:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, the article is clearly organized along this line which is really a shame. The whole thing seems largely unreadable at this point. There's a fair deal of good information in the article but the organization doesn't make any sense. I may try to rearrange things later, but I'm hardly expert and it would be quite a big task to take on for anybodyJFQ (talk) 13:31, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The intro and the general organisation of the article is correct, which is why I've reverted those changes of yours. My understanding is that after David Hume pointed out the naturalistic fallacy and the is-ought problem, there emerged this separation between analytic and normative aspects of legal philosophy - that's the same as what happened in political economy/economics, where they talk about the separation of positive and normative analysis. By all means keep editing away at the stuff below; it looks like the changes to the Aristotle part are useful, though keep in mind this is necessarily a summary, and that for great detail you want to change the main articles.  Wik idea  14:03, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, also, websites (even from Cornell law school) are not adequate sources. Need books.  Wik idea  14:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Gonna make me go to real sources huh. Ok, but it's still wrong. Let me know what you think of the next revision?JFQ (talk) 14:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * You missed the point. I wasn't challenging that there are analytic and normative questions. The distinction is real and present in a broad swath of philosophy. I was saying that "Natural law" is a theory of jurisprudence, not a type of question within the area of jurisprudence. Natural law theory is an answer to those questions and doesn't therefore make sense as an organizing principle on the same level as "analytic" and "normative". Natural law theory addresses analytic and normative questions just like any other theory of jurisprudence. It's of the same status as positivism realism and cls which are all discussed, somewhat confusingly, under the "analytic jurisprudence" heading. Of the existing categories tho, the Normative section needs the most work as it presently appears to be primarily about political philosophy and not jurisprudence. It looks to me like the article has been shoehorned badly into this structure which is at this point confused and confusing. I've made another stab at laying out a schema for organizing the article in the introduction which at least recognizes that natural law is not separate from other theories of jurisprudence in the questions that it addresses.JFQ (talk) 15:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Humour
Is this article meant to be a joke? I wasn't aware of any pages intended for comedy purposes being allowed. A search for Frédéric Bastiat, his book "The Law" - or any variation on that - in this artice found no results. Should we ammend the article on Physics to mention Newton but not Einstein in the same manner? - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 14:42, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wittgenstein???
I'm sorry, but why is Wittgenstein included as a philosopher of law? Or is that list only meant to include philosophers that have influenced jurisprudence?75.141.113.231 (talk) 10:48, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. I don't think Wittgenstein ever wrote about law - or, if he did, it would only have been in passing and uninformed. On the other hand, if we include philosophers who have 'only' influenced jurisprudence - as indeed Wittgenstein has - we will have to include nearly every philosopher who ever lived.--Wikiain (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Critical Rationalism
This section is out of place, has the wrong type of header, thereby messing up the entry, and is uninformative. Can someone with Wiki credentials please consider whether this is relevant to the entry, and if yes, where it should go and how it can be made informative? Thanks. In the meantime I am going to remove it.--80.89.84.200 (talk) 11:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Jurisprudential awareness and Jurisprudential consciouness
Although many people seem to consider awareness and consciouness as synonymous, and many writers have used these words in overlapping way; when one minutely obsrves there marked differences seems to exist between legal awareness, legal consciouness, Jurisprudential awareness and  Jurisprudential consciouness. (Usually consciouness seems to indicate 'state of being' where as awareness is one of the means to acheive the same. For difference between legal awareness, legal consciouness more elaborate definition also is available)

While undersigned is already working and developing on legal awareness, legal consciouness related articles, simultaneoully I am also coming across some information which would fit either in Jurisprudential awareness or under Jurisprudential consciouness concept. I would like to begin with Jurisprudential awareness and Jurisprudential consciouness as separate sections (As of now I do not know whether these concepts can have enough material to have a separate article.) If there is no objection I would prefere to build these two sections on this talk page and include them in this article there after.

Thanks and rgds

Mahitgar (talk) 08:15, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Jurisprudential awareness
Author John Delaney in his book "How to Do Your Best on Law School Exams" says, History, charector, and thus architecture of law and diverse issues it addressess are not singular, there is multiplicity in Jurisprudential voices,judicial arguments are not monolithic or singular in nature, hence members of legal fraternity need to develop a sense of Jurisprudential awareness.

Jurisprudential consciouness
According to Justice Brennan Jurisprudential consciouness represents that extra dimension knowledge, understanding and empathic imagination that supplies " the wellspring from which concepts such as dignity, decency and fairness flow"

Sharia and Fiqh in Islam
Why does religious law need to be included within this article? Sharia and Fiqh are purely matters of religion, with no real grounds in any modern, or even historic legal theory. I see no purpose for including this other than perhaps for the sake of diversity, which is great and all, but really has no place here. Also, there is no credible reference which mentions Abul A'la Maududi as a Jurist.

For these reasons Islam and Maududi are being removed. Please discuss any insights here. Thanks. ....SandwitchHawk.... (talk) 08:17, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

juridical work
Where should this be directed so people know what it means? Ranze (talk) 07:44, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Here is fine. Thank you ....SandwitchHawk.... (talk) 12:25, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

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Article Evaulation
The following article on Jurisprudence provides a good overview of the legal theory. It offers clear and concise structuring and displays a plethora of subtopics (and links to other articles) within the article. It clearly focuses on the main ideas surrounding jurisprudence. It is notably written in a tone which has no noticeable bias. Finally, the sources regarding this article seem to all be from scholarly sources. Overall this article offers a solid description of jurisprudence. Cantoncic (talk) 03:12, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Lede sentence
The lede begins “Jurisprudence or legal theory is the theoretical study of law …”. That seems muddled and overly complex. Qqs:
 * 1) Is the ‘or’ intended to indicate the terms are synonymous? If so, source?
 * 2) Source for theoretical study of law?

I edited that to “Jurisprudence''' is the study of the theory of law”. reverted. Hence this discussion. Humanengr (talk) 23:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
 * One could suppose that, in principle, there would be a clear distinction between theory of or about law and theory used in law; but there isn't, or at least no such distinction is generally accepted.  That's difficult enough and I think that the existing statement "the theoretical study of law" has a necessary imprecision.  Your proposal switches to another plane—to meta-study of the theories—and that certainly doesn't seem sufficient.  Wikiain (talk) 00:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * My starting point was that I didn’t see what value either “legal theory” or ‘theoretical’ adds. Common simple definitions seem to be “Jurisprudence is the science or philosophy of law.” Do you have sources that equate jurisprudence with legal theory? Re ‘theoretical’, that strikes me not as imprecise but rather as overly restrictive. Why not simply ‘study of law’? Humanengr (talk) 04:11, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Latin iurisprudentia does mean "the study of law", but "jurisprudence" is narrower and the difference can be expressed by speaking of "theory"—albeit more commonly so in Continental Europe. I can't think offhand of anybody who attempts, or at least achieves, a very precise definition. Such an attempt I'm sure would not be useful here. For an example, see Wolfgang Friedmann, Legal Theory (London, Stevens, 5th edn 1967), which opens (p 3):  "All systematic thinking about legal theory is linked at one end with philosophy and, at the other end, with political theory".  If he had said "jurisprudence" instead of "legal theory", who would have noticed?  Wikiain (talk) 04:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * AFAICS, some do. If one does a Google search for , one of the top hits is this — which indicates some distinction (ending with "Legal theory is a much broader and encompassing term, encompassing the philosophy of law and jurisprudence …."). Maybe we can build a footnote with cites to sources that distinguish or not between the terms — FN: Some authorities consider 'legal theory' roughly equivalent to 'jurisprudence' [cites], whereas others distinguish [cites]. I find that more clarifying and interesting than the 'or' which most take as signifying synonymation. Thoughts? Humanengr (talk) 06:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

To look for some clear statement of relation between the terms “jurisprudence” and “legal theory” is a waste of time. For one thing, no such distinction is generally accepted. For another, whatever is referred to by either term operates equally or nearly so in several languages: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish (Latin is now almost entirely of historical interest). Your Google search gets only to a blog. I’m not going to continue this conversation. Wikiain (talk)

Nowhere?
In the introduction you state that this subject is theoretical and a subject for philosophers or scientists. Sorry but this has from the (ancient)beginning (Old Roman law) never been so. It is a subject for "practitioners" and should be left that way.

145.129.136.48 (talk) 10:48, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I do not think any current textbook titled (simply or primarily) "Jurisprudence" takes that view. Errantios (talk) 08:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Article quality
This article needs a lot of work and I'm reaching out to get feedback about the article's structure and some of its content. My suggestion is sectioning out natural law, legal positivism, and the other theories such as legal realism and Dworkin's interpretivism. In the natural law and legal positivism sections, I think it may be better to organize the theories by chronology rather than legal theorists. In natural law, for example, major thinkers in Anglophone philosophy are Aquinas and Finnis (Plato and Aristotle provide background). In legal positivism, the section can be structured with Bentham and Austin, then Hans Kelsen, then Hart, and Raz. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lorick7 (talk • contribs) 17:41, 24 May 2019 (URC) (UTC)

New evaluation?
This subject is new to me and has provided a good introduction for me, but of course, there could be some improvements. Would this article benefit from having information from newer sources, like from this decade? --Drewhcochran1999 (talk) 09:20, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

New Evaluation
I feel like this article gives a good foundation on the history of jurisprudence, I also think that the article could be maybe more modern.Charieceb (talk) 01:31, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Evaluate an article
In the introduction, the article provides a general overview of what is to be included in the following sections and provides what the organization of the article will be. Tricia.e.advin (talk) 02:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions please for related term
I need a word with similar meaning in British English at Talk:Internal Market Bill to describe a group that includes a very senior judge and a number of eminent barristers. The word jurist is not acceptable. Any ideas? (there, please). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:00, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Page Evaluation
Really enjoyed reading this, awesome to learn the history behind it all. Any chance Dworkin's work can be elaborated more? Vanessajibarra (talk) 07:37, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion to remove John Rawls
Under normative jurisprudence, it is not clear why John Rawls has his own entry when other type of normative jurisprudence could take his place. I have nothing but respect for Rawls, it just does not fit. The sentence, " He is widely considered one of the most important English-language political philosophers of the 20th century. " does not say much. Why would he be added before someone like Randy Singer, Ayn Rand, or Rober Nozick, to name a few? It would be quite the task to determine which is of more importance in normative jurisprudence, and adding many people would make the article too long. Perhaps having links to a few important persons? Weagesdf (talk) 11:36, 25 January 2022 (UTC)


 * John Rawls is far and away more influential than these others (in particular Ayn Rand, who is not taken seriously by academic philosophers at all). Reliable secondary sources to support this should be extremely easy to find. Generalrelative (talk) 19:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Just a few refs from a very quick search:, , and . Generalrelative (talk) 19:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)


 * You have provided no evidence that Rawls' is more important than any other scholar of normative jurisprudence. It's also odd how you keep following me around WP. Almost like Wikipedia:Harassment#Wikihounding Weagesdf (talk) 22:17, 27 January 2022 (UTC)


 * John Rawls, who turned 80 this year, is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age.
 * John Rawls, who died in 2002, was the most influential American philosopher of the twentieth century.
 * Rawls remained the most important American philosopher since John Dewey.
 * Finally, per WP:HOUND: Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. Your recent contribution history reveals some rather disturbing reasons to be concerned about related problems on multiple articles. And this latest “no evidence” comment, given how easily refuted it was by the most casual glance at the articles I cited, seems to me pretty dispositive that you are not arguing in good faith. Generalrelative (talk) 22:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * What is problematic to you is someone who has a different ideology than you. Quit harassing me. The opinions of three persons does not show that his work is more important than any other philosopher in the field, such as those I named, or Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, Mills, etc. Weagesdf (talk) 08:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) This is not harassment. Wikipedia is not a space where you are entitled to assert your views unopposed. If you disagree, ANI is that way.
 * 2) Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. The three people I quoted just above are established subject-matter experts, and in the case of Martha Nussbaum a superlatively eminent one. Michael C. Dorf and Jedediah Purdy are no slouches either. These are precisely the kinds of sources we use to support claims of this nature.
 * Generalrelative (talk) 13:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Merger with Philosophy of Law
A discussions back in 2005/2006 was proposed in order to merge the articles Philosophy of law and the one here, Jurisprudence. I agree with @Wikidea that, and it perhaps is long overdue for these two pages be merged, for they cover almost exactly the same material, both in terms of (i) the academic concepts of jurisprudence and the philosophy of law; and (ii) the substance, sources, and information presented in each article. I am opening this discussion as the merger would be quite complicated as both articles are quite large and are linked to by many other articles. Dawkin Verbier (talk) 13:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the content I'm in favour of a merge. In theory there's a distinction that the two terms might capture, like mathematics versus philosophy of mathematics, one is the "meta", one is the activity itself. Jurisprudence might be stuff like "stare decisis" etc while philosophy of law would be more like "meta-ethics in law" and "legal realism". A good example of this is that I would not want a judge who was mostly thought of law in terms of legal realism for a judge in my case since they might decide the justice needs to altered in my case to serve the needs of some group, but at the same time I think there's quite a bit of legal realism that goes on in reality. Talpedia (talk) 13:43, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Almost two decades later, I'm pretty sure that they're still the same thing - go for it!  Wik idea  15:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm... these are not the exact same thing but the venn diagrams do overlap. If there is a merger then you would need to distinguish between modern legal analytic frameworks (legal realism and law and economics) and classical fields of jurisprudence (natural law or even canon (canon law) and sharia). Some re-organization would be needed but it is possible if someone wants to take on this project. Jorahm (talk) 21:47, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * They are definitely the same thing. As Jorahm correctly points out, there would be much work to do in sorting out the long history of the field, and the various debates that have defined it throughout the ages, but reliable sources universally agree that they are essentially two terms for the same thing. If there is any distinction in usage, its that jurisprudence is slightly more capacious, since it can also refer to the course of court decisions as distinguished from legislation and doctrine per Merrian-Webster, but that is the less common definition (as a quick Google search for "What is jurisprudence?" will show) and much less likely to be what our readers will be searching for when they type either term into our search bar. My opinion is that anyone with the time and energy should feel free to boldly merge. Generalrelative (talk) 22:24, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. Looks like university courses and academia are using the terms interchangeably. I'm pretty sure I've heard practicing lawyer types use it to mean "how we make decisions" (as opposed to what social forces cause us to make decisions) (kind of in this for example https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-2230.12527) but I guess this this is encompassed by "analytic jurisprudence" vs "sociological jurisprudence" as your sources mention. An I don't think I can maintain such fine etymological distinctions in the face of a body of literature using the terms identically. Talpedia (talk) 12:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Talpedia. Yeah, those practicing lawyer types are basically using the second definition I mentioned above, i.e. the course of court decisions. In a way, jurisprudence is a frustrating term because it can mean both the philosophy (or theory) of law and the way law is actually practiced. Usually we like to think of theory and practice as quite distinct, but that doesn't really apply here. Check out the variety of usage examples given in the Cambridge Dictionary. That said, any university course on jurisprudence is going to be a course on philosophy of law, full stop. Which is why I strongly favor the merge. Generalrelative (talk) 05:53, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think that "Jurisprudence" and "Philosophy of Law" are the same thing, although unfortunately there are philosophers who claim so. But I have no objection to counting Philosophy of Law as part of Jurisprudence. The redirect to "Case law" is good. Errantios (talk)

Post-(non)-merger discussion
Following the above discussion, it seems sensible to distinguish the two pages. But as someone who see the two as equivalent, I’m not sure how to go about that. Step 1: I would like to add a hatnote, to at least make readers aware that there are two, potentially-confusable pages, but the phrasing for “This page is about _____, for _____ see Philosophy of law” (and vice versa) eludes me. Anyone have clearer thoughts? — HTGS (talk) 04:20, 12 December 2023 (UTC)