ABSTRACT
One can presume that the intense battle between the two camps provided the framework of the sociology of law and led to a re-reading of the history of law as bound up with an insurmountable tension between formal and substantive rationality. Formal jurisprudence refers to the various modern and contemporary approaches of law that correspond, at least to some degree, to what Max Weber meant when he spoke of the formal rationality of law. Instrumental jurisprudence has no interest per se in original intents attributed to legislative or constitutional assemblies, and is certainly less preoccupied than formal jurisprudence with the conceptual cohesiveness of a constitutional text. The jurisprudence of values is an interpretive method based on a constitutional ethic of conviction. Constitutional values and fundamental principles are constructed according to a pre-existing, even supra-constitutional hierarchy of values that guides the judge in the task of interpreting and applying constitutional rules.
