ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the value of jurisprudence in legal education. It argues that jurisprudence should be mandated at an early stage of the students' law curriculum as the legal ideals that may be imparted through a jurisprudence course cannot be adequately taught in a professional ethics course or through teaching jurisprudential perspectives in doctrinal subjects. The disjunction between theory and practice is not limited to the controversy over teaching jurisprudence. The value of legal theory or jurisprudence in legal education has been the subject of considerable debate. The principal investigators of the survey therefore postulated that the pressure for jurisprudence to be offered as an elective came not from jurisprudence teachers but from teachers of other subjects. In a survey of American law schools in 1951, the remarkably small number requiring jurisprudence or some other perspective course was bemoaned. As an elective, jurisprudence typically attracted only a small number of students.
