Jurisprudence is the study of law and the ideas behind it. It asks what law is, where its authority comes from and how it connects to justice and morality. The word comes from the Latin jurisprudentia, meaning knowledge of the law, and it also has a second, narrower meaning in practice: the body of decisions that courts have made.
Definition of Jurisprudence
The simplest definition is “the study, knowledge, or science of law”, which is how Cornell’s Legal Information Institute puts it. It adds that, in the United States, the word commonly means the philosophy of law.
In plain English, jurisprudence asks the questions behind the rules:
- What makes a rule a law?
- Does a law have to be fair to count as law?
- Where does the authority of law come from?
- How should judges decide hard cases?
A lawyer applies the law. Jurisprudence asks why the law is the way it is and whether it should be different.
The Two Meanings of Jurisprudence
People use the word in two ways, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion.
1. Jurisprudence as legal theory. This is the academic meaning: the philosophy and science of law. It is what most definitions describe.
2. Jurisprudence as a body of case law. Lawyers also use “jurisprudence” for the decisions courts have made on a subject. A common example is the “Strasbourg jurisprudence”, meaning the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
The Human Rights Act 1998 shows the second meaning at work. Section 2 says a court deciding a question about Convention rights must take into account any judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, so far as it is relevant in the court’s opinion. As 33 Bedford Row explains, this means UK courts must consider Strasbourg decisions but are not bound by them. Lord Bingham put the usual approach as keeping pace with Strasbourg “no more, but certainly no less” in R (Ullah) v Special Adjudicator [2004] UKHL 26.
The Main Schools of Jurisprudence
Different schools answer the core question, “what is law?”, in different ways. These are the approaches Cornell’s Legal Information Institute describes.
Natural law: Morality, religion, reason and conscience are also sources of law. On this view, law is linked to morality.
Legal positivism: Law comes only from rules enacted by a government or court, with no necessary link to morality.
Legal realism: Judges resolve hard cases by balancing interests, and their political, economic and psychological leanings shape the result.
Formalism: Law works like maths or science, with judges deducing rules from legal principles.
Cornell also lists critical legal theory, feminist jurisprudence, law and economics, utilitarianism and legal pragmatism as other prominent approaches.
Natural Law vs Legal Positivism
The central debate in jurisprudence is whether law and morality are linked. The most famous clash is the Hart–Fuller debate, published in the Harvard Law Review in February 1958. H. L. A. Hart’s article was “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals”, and Lon Fuller replied with “Positivism and Fidelity to Law”.
The debate used a case from post-war West Germany. A woman reported her husband for remarks about Hitler in 1944, and he was sentenced to death under Nazi law. After the regime fell, a court convicted her for using a law that violated basic justice.
- Hart’s view (positivism): law and morality are separate, so a rule can be valid law even if it is unjust.
- Fuller’s view (natural law): law has a necessary connection to morality, and a legal system must meet eight principles of legality to count as law at all.
You do not have to agree with either, but the debate shows why jurisprudence is useful: it forces you to say what you mean by “law”.
A Quick Glossary
- Precedent: an earlier court decision that guides later cases.
- Ratio decidendi: the legal reasoning that is essential to a decision and binds later courts.
- Obiter dicta: remarks made in passing in a judgment that do not bind later courts.
- Common law: law developed through court decisions, as opposed to statute.
- Statute: a law passed by Parliament.
Quick Answers
Case law is the set of court decisions. Jurisprudence can mean the study of law in general, or, in some uses, the body of case law on a subject. If I see “Strasbourg jurisprudence”, it means the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
Natural law links law to morality, so an unjust rule may fall short of being true law. Legal positivism holds that law comes from rules enacted by a government or court, whatever their moral quality.
It was a 1958 exchange in the Harvard Law Review between H. L. A. Hart and Lon Fuller on whether law and morality are separate, tested on a case from post-war West Germany.
