Jurisprudence
9781465680440
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In the widest of its applications the term jurisprudence means the science of law, using the word law in that vague and general sense in which it includes all species of obligatory rules of human action. Of jurisprudence in this sense, there are as many divisions as there are kinds of law which have been deemed sufficiently important and well developed to serve as the subject-matter of distinct branches of learning. They are at least three in number: Civil Jurisprudence.—This is the science of civil law, that is to say, the law of the land. Its purpose is to give a complete and systematic account of that complex body of principles which is received and administered in the tribunals of the state. International Jurisprudence.—This is the science of international law or the law of nations. It is concerned not with the rules which are in force within states, but with those which prevail between states. Just as the conduct of the subjects of a single state is governed by the civil law, so international law regulates the conduct of states themselves in their relations towards each other. Natural Jurisprudence.—This is the science of that which our forefathers termed natural law or the law of nature (jus naturale). By this they meant the principles of natural justice—justice as it is in itself, in deed and in truth, as contrasted with those more or less imperfect and distorted images of it which may be seen in civil and international law. Whether these principles of natural justice are rightly entitled to the name of law—whether natural law, so called, can be rightly classed along with civil and international law as a species of the same genus—is a question which it is not needful for us here to discuss. It is sufficient for our present purpose to note the historical fact, that there is a very extensive literature in which the law of nature is given a place side by side with civil law and the law of nations (jus naturale, jus civile, and jus gentium), and in which the resulting threefold division of jurisprudence into natural, civil, and international, is recognised as valid.
