This document provides a review of Edgar Bodenheimer's 1974 treatise "Jurisprudence: The Philosophy and Method of Law". The review summarizes that Bodenheimer structured the treatise with descriptive historical and conceptual sections, but also included his own natural law perspectives. It notes that Bodenheimer argued the theory of jurisprudence should consider notions of justice and human values, and that law acts as a mediator between social ideals and reality. The review concludes that Bodenheimer's treatise illustrates his lifelong championing of the importance of human rights to the validity and legitimacy of legal systems.
This document provides a review of Edgar Bodenheimer's 1974 treatise "Jurisprudence: The Philosophy and Method of Law". The review summarizes that Bodenheimer structured the treatise with descriptive historical and conceptual sections, but also included his own natural law perspectives. It notes that Bodenheimer argued the theory of jurisprudence should consider notions of justice and human values, and that law acts as a mediator between social ideals and reality. The review concludes that Bodenheimer's treatise illustrates his lifelong championing of the importance of human rights to the validity and legitimacy of legal systems.
This document provides a review of Edgar Bodenheimer's 1974 treatise "Jurisprudence: The Philosophy and Method of Law". The review summarizes that Bodenheimer structured the treatise with descriptive historical and conceptual sections, but also included his own natural law perspectives. It notes that Bodenheimer argued the theory of jurisprudence should consider notions of justice and human values, and that law acts as a mediator between social ideals and reality. The review concludes that Bodenheimer's treatise illustrates his lifelong championing of the importance of human rights to the validity and legitimacy of legal systems.
This document provides a review of Edgar Bodenheimer's 1974 treatise "Jurisprudence: The Philosophy and Method of Law". The review summarizes that Bodenheimer structured the treatise with descriptive historical and conceptual sections, but also included his own natural law perspectives. It notes that Bodenheimer argued the theory of jurisprudence should consider notions of justice and human values, and that law acts as a mediator between social ideals and reality. The review concludes that Bodenheimer's treatise illustrates his lifelong championing of the importance of human rights to the validity and legitimacy of legal systems.
By Edgar Bodenheinier. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. Reviewed by Vincent Luizzi Dept. of Philosophy Southwest Texas State University San Marcos, Texas. For the legal profession in America, a treatise is a comprehensive study and descriptlon of an area of law. Whether the treatise be on torts, contracts, property, or evidence, it will be a compilation and organization of the rules and principles of the field, together with a presentation of cases and statutes in whlch they are articulated, of the rationale for and debate surrounding these rules, and of their history. In law the treatise seeks to establish no particular thesis as correct, and thus essentlaliy it differs from a philosophical treatise whose purpose is one of arguing for the truth of a particular position. Insofar as the late Edgar Bodenheimer's treatise on jurisprudence stands for a rejection of any rigid separation of legal and philosophical treatises, it is an interesting analogue to a natural law theorist's relection of any rigid separation of law as It is and law as it ought to be. In effect, Bodenheimer is unwilling to make a statement of what jurisprudence is, without an inclusion of hls view on what it ought to be. What makes this analogy even more interesting is that Bodenhelmer's views on the nature of jurisprudence and law are those of a natural law theorist. Says Bodenheimer, "no Jurisprudential treatise should bypass or ignore the burning questions connected with the achievement of justice in human relations....It is submitted that the theory and philosophy of the law must remain sterile and arid if they fall to pay attention to the human values which it Is the Function of the law to promote." (vli) As for his view on the nature of law understood as a iegal system, Bodenheimer teils us that "a legal system acts as a mediator between social ideals and soclal reallty. In terms of average social experience, It may be said to hover In a twilight
JlYWl wishjng to give a rigld or an all-ernbmivedeflnl.
don of nqtwal law, 1wauld in general use the term to
denote certain hdamental ptlnclples of justlce whose
recognltlon and obsenrance is hdlspensahle, or at least h@Jy necessary, in a workable order of sqlety,,.. It is my oplnlon that a solidly g o a d e d pNlosophy of Law mu$t pay attention to the problem of natural law,,.whlch..,forms a mk bottom on whlch the ediflce of law and justlce must rest... Natural law thinking should be non&gmadc, qexible, and open-minded. -Edgar BodenheMer, VERA LF3, ML V, no. 1
zone between nornativity and actuality." (191)
However much Bodenheimer's treatise is distinctive for its inclusion of this natural law component, the first part of the treatise is largely a descriptive account of the hlstory of jurisprudential thought. Besides this section devoted to history, Bodenheimer structures hls discussion with sections on the nature and functions of the law and on the sources and technlques of the law. In his historical introduction to the philosophy of law, Bodenheimer includes chapters on the theories of ancient Greece and Rome, of the middle ages, and of the classical era of natural law, along with chapters on German transcendental Idealism, historical and evolutionary theories, utiiitarlanism, analytical positivism, sociological jurisprudence and iegal realism, and the revival of natural law and value-oriented jurisprudence. It Is In the next parts of the book that Bodenheimer veers from thls descriptive narrative and assumes at times the voice of critic and advocate. The part on the nature and functions of the law includes chapters on order, on justice, and on law as a synthesis of the two. Bodenheimer also devotes a chapter to distinguishing law h-om other agencies of social control. Another is devoted to the advantages and disadvantages of the rule of law. In the last part of the treatise, Bodenheimer includes chapters on the formal and nonformal sources of law and on the technlques of science and the judlcial process, Prof. John B. OaMey, a colleague of Prof. Bodenheimer's at U.C. Davls Law School, observed in his tribute on the occasion of Bodenheimer's death in 199 1 : "Throughout his long career in jurisprudence, Edgar relentlessly championed the Importance of human rights to the validity of law and the legitimacy of legal systems." ("Tribute," U. C. Dank Law Revlew, vol. 26. no. 3, Spring 1993, p. 504.)* Bodenheimer's treatise on jurisprudence, with its inclusion of Bodenheimer's natural law views about jurisprudence and law, stands at once as an iliustration and a confirmation of what Prof. Oakley observed. 'See "In Memoriam", VERA LEX,vol. XI, no. 2, 1991. 4
Hegel and Legal Theoly
By Drucilla Corneii, Michael Rosenfeld, David Gray Carlson (eds.). New York: Routledge, 199 1 . Reviewed by John Hund Dept. of African Law University of the North Northern Transvaal, South Africa. The editors of this volume are iaw professors at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Schooi of Law in New York City. They think that the birth of Hegelian studies in American iegal scholarship can be traced back to a Vera Lex, Vol. XIV,Nos. 1 and 2, 1994
