Contemporary Juristic Theory, Civil Rights, and American Politics

Abstract

The severe disputations which rage in contempo rary jurisprudential thought revolve primarily around certain vexing philosophical and ethical questions which cast jurispru dential thought into various philosophical molds or schools. The viewpoints of contemporary juristic theories, however, are also definitely colored by ideological factors of a conservative or of a liberal character, although, in most instances, these fac tors have remained either unclarified or completely lost in the intricacies of philosophical disputation. A significant feature of jurisprudential thought today is the strong revival of inter est in natural-law theory. Sharp differences of opinion center particularly around the implications and consequences of natu ral-law jurisprudence for liberalism and conservatism as well as for civil rights and racial desegregation. Despite the fact that natural-law theories might embrace essentially different phenomena or that they might be used for contradictory pur poses, in all their forms they are marked by characteristics which make natural-law doctrine essentially and fundamentally conservative. Sociological jurisprudence and legal realism, on the other hand, may be regarded as the principal forms of ex pression of liberalism in the area of juristic thought. The liberal implications and consequences of these lines of thought for civil rights and desegregation cases are especially evident.