English for Law Students

Vocabulary

1. jurisprudence [‘ʤuərɪsˌpruːd(ə)n(t)s] n

– законоведение, право, правоведение, юриспруденция

2. maxim [‘mæksɪm] n

– максима (краткое изречение, выражающее общеизвестную истину, правило поведения или этический принцип)

3. principle [‘prɪn(t)səpl] n

– правило; закон; принцип

4. scholar [‘skɔlə] n

– учёный (обычно гуманитарий)

5. jurist [‘ʤuərɪst] n

– законовед, правовед, юрист

6. law [lɔː] n

– закон (регулирующий, предписывающий акт), право; правоведение, законоведение, юриспруденция

7. reasoning [‘riːz(ə)nɪŋ] n

– рассуждение, умозаключение

8. natural law [͵nætʃ(ə)rəlʹlɔ:]

– естественное право

9. civil law

– гражданское право

10. law of nations

– международное право

11. rough [rʌf] adj

– грубый

12. positivism n

– позитивизм (в юриспруденции точка зрения, состоящая в том, что любую правовую систему лучше всего изучать с позиций действующего права; направление сформировалось как реакция на теорию естественного права)

13. determine [dɪ’tɜːmɪn] v

– определять, устанавливать

14. legislator [‘leʤɪsleɪtə] n

– 1) законодатель; член законодательного органа;
2) правовед, юрист

15. barrister [‘bærɪstə] n

– барристер (адвокат, имеющий право выступать в высших судах)

16. judge [‘ʤʌʤ] n

– судья

17. approach [ə’prəuʧ] n

– подход

18. theory [‘θɪərɪ] n

– теория

19. contradictory [ˌkɔntrə’dɪkt(ə)rɪ] adj

– противоречащий; несовместимый; внутренне противоречивый

20. policy [‘pɔləsɪ] n

– политика, линия поведения, установка, курс, стратегия

21. goal [gəul] n

– задача, цель; место назначения

Text

The word jurisprudence is derived from a latin maxim as referred ‘jurisprudentia’ but owes its origin to Rome. It is a combination of two latin words ‘juris’ which means ‘law’ and ‘prudence’ which means ‘knowledge’ or ‘skill’. Therefore jurisprudence is the study, knowledge, skill and theory of law.

Jurisprudence includes principles behind law that make the law. Scholars of jurisprudence, also known as jurists or legal theorists (including legal philosophers and social theorists of law), hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions.

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 in two rough groups:

1. Problems internal to law and legal systems as such.

2. Problems of law as a particular social institution as it relates to the larger political and social situation in which it exists.

Answers to these questions come from four primary schools of thought in general jurisprudence:

Natural law 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.

Legal positivism, by contrast to natural law, holds that there is no necessary connection between law and morality and that the force of law comes from some basic social facts. Legal positivists differ on what those facts are.

Legal realism is a third theory of jurisprudence which 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, barristers and judges do with it. Similar approaches have been developed in many different ways in sociology of law.

Critical legal studies are a younger theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s. It is primarily a negative thesis that holds that the law is largely contradictory, and can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of the dominant social group.

The role of Jurisprudence is to decide which laws and moral and which laws are immoral. To do this legal philosophers ask questions such as:

“Does this law comply with the morals of our society?”

“Does this law ensure all people are equally accountable?”

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/jurisprudence.aspx

 

Supplementary texts

History of jurisprudence

Two main sources of jurisprudential thought and experience emerge from antiquity. These are the philosophical speculation of the Greeks and the legal and administrative practice of the Romans. The speculative genius of Plato issued in The Republic and The Laws. Aristotle consolidated this body of philosophical thought and brought to it the strength of empirical observation in his treatises on ethics and on politics.

Greek speculation on the nature of law centered on the question of whether law exists by nature or by convention. The Greek philosophers examined this fundamental question so thoroughly that it is hard to find instances of contemporary speculation that escape the bounds set by the Greek thinkers.

Roman law, on the other hand, had an autonomous development based on a millennium of judicial experience and administrative practice. Greek philosophical theories permeated the essence of Roman law, but the slow, steady accumulation of legal experience and its crystallization into general principles of law and finally into codification gave Roman law its enduring character. For the Romans, jurisprudence always remained an eminently practical study.

These two sources, namely, Greek theories of the nature of justice and Roman experience in political administration, became, after religion, the most dominant aspect of medieval culture. The idea of the Holy Roman Empire with the Corpus Juris Civilis as a statute binding all Christendom and the Roman Catholic Church with its manifold forms of law as spiritual authority for all Christians formed a coherent theoretical structure.

St. Thomas Aquinas divided law into the eternal, the divine, the natural, and the human. It will be noted that two of these, the eternal law and the natural law, are theories of the nature of justice. The divine law and the human law are ordained or posited. We thus see the divisions of antiquity continued in the form of notions of law that exists by nature and law that is ordained, whether by God or by man.

This distinction survived the Renaissance revolutions in science and government. Indeed, the great political revolutions were waged in the name of a secularized law of nature abstracted from the mind of man and considered the true mark of his humanity. Reason, as higher law, was held to legitimize revolt against the dictates of sovereign will.

This fundamental divergence of opinion on the nature of law came down to the twentieth century, the English-speaking common law countries heavily committed to the view that law is the ordainment of a lawfully constituted sovereign; and the civil law countries alternating between a social scientific view of law as positive enactment and law as existing in some sense independently of human disposition.

 

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/jurisprudence.aspx