Jurisprudence in the Mirror

Abstract

Abstract This book originates in a sense of puzzlement often experienced by scholars interested in jurisprudence. On the one hand, jurisprudence deals with abstract questions concerning the nature, structure, and distinctive features of law. Questions such as these are not system-specific: when jurisprudents theorize about such topics as nature of legal norms, the legal system, legal reasoning, and interpretation, they aim at producing a theory that is true of all possible legal norms—and not those that happen to be in force in some particular legal system. On the other, though, jurisprudents are tacitly influenced by their background institutional context. Even from the more limited vantage point of contemporary analytical jurisprudence as practised in the post-World War II Western world, one cannot help but notice a substantive divide between theorizing about the law in the civil law world (in particular, Continental Europe and Latin America) and in the common law world (the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand)—a ‘cultural divide’ within analytic jurisprudence that has never been described or explained in a systematic way. The book fills this gap: it includes twelve chapters written by prominent and influential jurisprudents from the civil law world, which are meant to provide the idea of how a general treatise in jurisprudence would look like from the perspective of their tradition. Each chapter is then followed by a response by a jurisprudent from the common law world, which will help highlight what the two worlds share, where they part ways, and why.