Law vs. Jurisprudence

Main Difference

The main difference between Law and Jurisprudence is that the Law is a system of rules and guidelines, generally backed by governmental authority and Jurisprudence is a theoretical study of law, by philosophers and social scientists.

• Law

  Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.

  A general distinction can be made between (a) civil law jurisdictions, in which a legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates their laws, and (b) common law systems, where judge-made precedent is accepted as binding law. Historically, religious laws played a significant role even in settling of secular matters, and is still used in some religious communities. Islamic Sharia law is the world’s most widely used religious law, and is used as the primary legal system in some countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

  The adjudication of the law is generally divided into two main areas. Criminal law deals with conduct that is considered harmful to social order and in which the guilty party may be imprisoned or fined. Civil law (not to be confused with civil law jurisdictions above) deals with the resolution of lawsuits (disputes) between individuals or organizations.

  Law provides a source of scholarly inquiry into legal history, philosophy, economic analysis and sociology. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness, and justice.

• Jurisprudence

  Jurisprudence or legal theory is the theoretical study of law, principally by philosophers but, from the twentieth century, also by social scientists. Scholars of jurisprudence, also known as jurists or legal theorists, hope to obtain a deeper understanding of legal reasoning, legal systems, legal institutions, and the role of law in society.

  Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was focused on the first principles of the natural law, civil law, and the law of nations. General jurisprudence can be divided into categories both by the type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence, or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best answered. Contemporary philosophy of law, which deals with general jurisprudence, addresses problems internal to law and legal systems, and problems of law as a particular social institution as law relates to the larger political and social situation in which it exists.

  This article distinguishes three distinct branches of thought in general jurisprudence. To begin with, ancient natural law, as a major branch and theory of jurisprudence, is the idea that there are rational objective limits to the power of legislative rulers. The foundations of law are accessible through reason and it is from these laws of nature that human-created laws gain whatever force they have. Secondly, ‘clarificatory’ or analytic jurisprudence rejects natural law’s fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. It espouses the use of a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to aspects of legal systems. It comprises different theories of jurisprudence. For example, legal positivism, holds that there is no necessary connection between law and morality and that the force of law comes from some basic social facts. And legal realism argues that the real world practice of law is what determines what law is; the law has the force that it does because of what legislators, lawyers and judges do with it. Thirdly, normative jurisprudence is concerned with “evaluative” theories of law. It deals with what the goal or purpose of law is, or what moral or political theories provide a foundation for the law. Besides the question “What is law?”, it tries to answer what the proper function of law was, or what sorts of acts should be subject to legal sanctions, and what sorts of punishment should be permitted.