Analytical Jurisprudence
ANALYTICAL JURISPRUDENCE
Analytical jurisprudence is a method of legal study that concentrates on the logical structure of law, the meanings and uses of its concepts, and the formal terms and the modes of its operation. It draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of law. It is not concerned with the past stages of its evolution or its goodness or badness.
Law exist as it is, regardless of good or bad, past or future.
“a law, which actually exist, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we appropriate our approbation and disapprobation”
Analytical jurisprudence is a legal theory that draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of law. Analytical jurisprudence is not to be mistaken for legal formalism (the idea that legal reasoning is or can be modelled as a mechanical, algorithmic process). Indeed, it was the analytical jurists who first pointed out that legal formalism is fundamentally mistaken as a theory of law.
Analytic, or 'clarificatory' jurisprudence uses a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to the aspects of legal systems. This was a philosophical development that rejected natural law's fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. David Hume famously argued in A Treatise of Human Nature that people invariably slip between describing that the world is a certain way to saying therefore we ought to conclude on a particular course of action. But as a matter of pure logic, one cannot conclude that we ought to do something merely because something is the case. So analysing and clarifying the way the world is must be treated as a strictly separate question to normative and evaluative ought questions.
The most important questions of analytic jurisprudence are: "What are laws?"; "What is the law?"; "What is the relationship between law and power/sociology?"; and, "What is the relationship between law
Analytical jurisprudence is a method of legal study that concentrates on the logical structure of law, the meanings and uses of its concepts, and the formal terms and the modes of its operation. It draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of law. It is not concerned with the past stages of its evolution or its goodness or badness.
Law exist as it is, regardless of good or bad, past or future.
“a law, which actually exist, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we appropriate our approbation and disapprobation”
Analytical jurisprudence is a legal theory that draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of law. Analytical jurisprudence is not to be mistaken for legal formalism (the idea that legal reasoning is or can be modelled as a mechanical, algorithmic process). Indeed, it was the analytical jurists who first pointed out that legal formalism is fundamentally mistaken as a theory of law.
Analytic, or 'clarificatory' jurisprudence uses a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to the aspects of legal systems. This was a philosophical development that rejected natural law's fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. David Hume famously argued in A Treatise of Human Nature that people invariably slip between describing that the world is a certain way to saying therefore we ought to conclude on a particular course of action. But as a matter of pure logic, one cannot conclude that we ought to do something merely because something is the case. So analysing and clarifying the way the world is must be treated as a strictly separate question to normative and evaluative ought questions.
The most important questions of analytic jurisprudence are: "What are laws?"; "What is the law?"; "What is the relationship between law and power/sociology?"; and, "What is the relationship between law