Chapter 4 Preface to the 1962 Edition

An earlier work of mine (Jurisprudence, 1940 edition), which forms part of the core of this book, states that my aim was to "give an understanding of law and politics to those interested in the general problem of law as an instrument of social policy." help students or researchers”.This is basically the purpose of this book, although much of it has been completely rewritten and its scope greatly expanded.This book focuses on many issues of jurisprudence that were not addressed in my earlier work, and adds a completely new section entitled "Sources and Techniques of Law."Of course, this part of the book is primarily, but not exclusively, written for students and legal practitioners who are interested in the methodology of the law and the peculiarities and instrumentalities of the trial process.

This volume gathers together in a first part the historical material on the development of jurisprudential thought scattered in the 1940 book Jurisprudence and reorganizes them largely in a chronological vein.The reader will quickly discover that this introduction to history is largely descriptive and that, with the exception of a concluding section, there is little critical appraisal of the schools of thought in light of my own philosophy of law.In writing this book, I thought that since one of the purposes of publishing this book is teaching, it might be more appropriate to leave the evaluation of the contributions of great legal thinkers for classroom discussion.

On the other hand, the treatment of substantive issues of general legal theory in Parts II and III of this book is based on certain philosophical and methodological assumptions underlying my approach to jurisprudential problems of.Perhaps the most fundamental of these assumptions is the view that no professional treatise on jurisprudence should avoid or ignore the important issues related to the achievement of justice in human relations, despite any attempt to address the issue by objective criteria. There will be difficulties in doing it.We believe that the function of law is to promote the realization of these human values, so that legal theory and legal philosophy must be impoverished and boring if they ignore these human values.Of course, this does not mean that jurisprudence scholars should be encouraged to be guided by imaginative and emotional preferences in their discussions of fundamental questions of the legal order.On the contrary, the jurisprudence scholar should adhere to independent and objective standards, because such standards will admonish him to make every effort and to the extent possible to distinguish rational and empirically verifiable objective phenomena or materials from subjective opinions or pure speculations. thoughts are separated.Furthermore, jurists must be aware that conclusions about axiological issues must be provisional, and new considerations must be made based on new discoveries and experiences.It should be pointed out, however, that while academic simplicity and rigor are necessary for those seeking truth about human values, this does not justify the existence of the a priori justification for scientific research.

The object of jurisprudence is very broad, including the philosophical, sociological, historical and analytical components of legal theory.It is impossible to study all aspects of the discipline simultaneously in one introductory monograph.Since a considerable number of works of jurisprudence have been published in English-speaking countries in this century, they focus on analyzing and explaining the basic concepts of law (such as rights, duties, responsibilities, legal personality, etc.), so this book does not intend to provide definitions for these technical terms of law or explanations, nor is it intended to present general theories of contract, ownership or criminal liability.In addition, this book can only briefly discuss the historical, sociological, and economic perspectives that have helped to shape the development of law, past and present.One can gain invaluable insights into this field of jurisprudence from the work of Ehrlich, Pound, Fechner, Friedman, and others.Since I believe that an important aspect of jurisprudence was somewhat neglected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, namely, the philosophical analysis of the fundamental nature of law and of the fundamental goals and values ​​that a legal order should aspire to, the bulk of this book is intended to be devoted to This important area of ​​legal thought is discussed.

The author is grateful for the generous research grant provided by the Rockefeller Foundation for the completion of this book.At the same time, the author would also like to thank Yale Law School, which not only provided excellent convenience for the author's research, but also gave the author great intellectual encouragement.My wife, Bridget M. Bodenheimer, both assisted with my research and provided many constructive criticisms.She also drafted the index for this book.Last but not least, the author would also like to express his deep gratitude to Miss Dorothy Alice Cox and Mrs. M. Dean Leslie for their hard work in finishing the manuscript of this book.