After Conceptual Analysis: The Rise of Practice Theory

Abstract

General jurisprudence is the study of the most general features of law. The tradition of analytic jurisprudence – one that spans from Hobbes to Coleman – has exhibited a sustained focus on identifying the constitutive features of law. For some time, this question has been framed as the search for the essential or necessary features of the concept of ‘law’. But a look at the tradition reveals that this is only one of a number of ways of looking at law from a similar vantage point. That vantage point or perspective focuses on the structure of law. For a variety of reasons, this focus is changing and a new question is emerging.