Law and Philosophy: The Contribution of Mr. Roy Stone
The recent trend towards the socialisation of legal studies has not unnaturally caused a good deal of confusion and disagreement on the role of jurisprudence. However, since the law is centred on dispute and argument, there can be little real objection to the extension of the process to the philosophy of law. Still it would be difficult to devise a less immediately appealing way of re-establishing and reviving the subject of jurisprudence than another dose of the schools, or another tendentious review of contemporary exponents. My excuses for doing just that are not even particularly novel—an appreciation of the importance of the pressures towards an empirical approach to law and legal studies, and the usual desire to get some of the more distracting flies safely corked back again into their bottles. However, the total failure of the recent Cambridge Committee on the Organisation of the Social Sciences to produce even the outline of an overall structure for the integrated study of the law as an important means of social control does at least provide a suitable opportunity for the re-examination of the role of jurisprudence.