ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to describe and defend jurisprudence as an enterprise of theorising about law that is distinct from what is now understood as legal philosophy in the Anglophone world. Jurisprudence must draw on legal philosophy but also on many other resources. It should be an open quest for juristically (rather than philosophically) significant insights about law. Its purpose is to inform and guide the juristic task of making organised social regulation a valuable practice, rooted and effective in the specific contexts and historical conditions in which it exists. This practice should serve demands for justice and security through regulation, as these perennial values are understood in their time and place, and as they might be clarified and reconciled as legal ideals. The chapter criticises the orientation of some dominant forms of contemporary legal philosophy and highlights the character of jurisprudence as a theoretical practice of jurists. Jurisprudence resists incorporation in any academic discipline. It rejects restriction by the methodological protocols or criteria of intellectual significance asserted by philosophy or the social sciences. It exists only to support juristic practice.
