Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1966

Keywords

Natural law, Legal systems, Legal science

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law and Society | Legal History

Abstract

Jurisprudence can afford us some insight into whether a particular system is functioning effectively. To do this jurisprudes must extrapolate the aims of the society and then evaluate how effectively its legal system functions to structure social activity so that those aims are realized in an orderly fashion. Jurisprudence is seen, therefore, to be a form of time and motion study on a grand scale. Judgments about the ultimate worth of a given society’s aims are excluded from jurisprudence, however, on the ground that such emotionally charged and ethically relative conclusions cannot be proved by any empirically verifiable scale of values.

Publication Citation

Published in: Cornell Law Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4 (1966).

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