ABSTRACT
By ‘Western jurisprudence’, we have in mind the overall attitudes of jurists in the West to questions of justice and the law and the patterns of legal theory which have prevailed in Western Europe and the United States. The legal tradition of the West, as interpreted by its jurists, has been, in the words of JC Smith, ‘to regard the Graeco-Roman synthesis as a superior form of law’ which concentrates on ‘the individual man with his attendant rights and obligations’. Some jurists find the rationale of Western jurisprudence in a general desire to move towards ‘the securing of a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary for the preservation of the community’ (Russell). We select for discussion in this chapter Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, and, in the next chapter, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.
