Analytical jurisprudence essay

ANALYTICAL JURISPRUDENCE. Analytical jurisprudence is a method of legal study that concentrates on the logical structure of law, the meanings and uses of its concepts, and the formal terms and the modes of its operation. It draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of law.

Indeed, it was the analytical jurists who first pointed out that legal formalism is fundamentally mistaken as a theory of law. Analytic, or 'clarificatory' jurisprudence uses a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to the aspects of legal systems.

Law cannot be defined by reference to any idea of justice. The science of jurisprudence is only concerned with the positive laws. According to Austin, analysis of positive law is to be done by the operation of logic on the law without consideration of the history of ethical significance.

Jeremy Bentham can be said to be the founder of the Analytical school. In one of his books, he rejected the clinches of natural law and expounded the principle of utility with scientific precision. He divided jurisprudence into expository and censorial. The former deals with the law as it is while the latter deals with the law as it ought to be.